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THE MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 



THE MENACE OF 
SPIRITUALISM 



BY 

ELLIOT O'DONNELL 

Author of "Ghostly Phenomena," "The Haunted 

Man," "Twenty Years* Experience as 

a Ghost Hunter," etc. 



WITH A FOREWORD BY 
Father Bernard Vaughan, S.J. 




NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






#y 






Copyright, 1920, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 



A 11 Bights Reserved 



m -9 1320 



©CI.A565509 



DEDICATED 

BY PERMISSION TO 

His Grace 

THE 

DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 



NOTE 

In presenting this volume to the public I 
desire it to be perfectly clear that the views 
in it apply to Spiritualism only (not to Psy- 
chical Research, which, inasmuch as it touches 
on the investigation of spontaneous manifes- 
tations in haunted houses, etc., is, in my opin- 
ion, justifiable), and do not detract in any 
way from the attitude I have hitherto adopted 
in my writings towards spontaneous ghostly 
phenomena. 

ELLIOT 0' BONN ELL. 



FOREWOKD 

Although I do not subscribe to all the 
doctrine and teachings expressed between 
the covers of this brochure, yet do I gladly 
recommend it to the public as an exposition 
of the menace of Spiritualism in our midst. 
y The public has plenty of temptations to en- 
counter on the road of life without its being 
enticed and drawn into these sideshows 
where freaks, frauds, and fiends may rob 
them not only of their money, but, perhaps, 
even leave them stripped of their physical 
» outfit and of their moral attributes. 

Naturally I do not place all under the same 
damnation because I can but judge of the 
ruin wrought through Spiritualism by the 
cases that have come under my own obser- 
vation. But you may depend upon it that 
the Catholic Church would not forbid her 
children to have anything at all to do with 
this insidious form of necromancy unless she 
was satisfied that harm only and no good 

comes out of it. Her experience of Spirit- 
ix 



x FOREWORD 

ualism covers nearly two thousand years, and 
she seems to regard it, not as a means of get- 
ting into communion with saints, but as a 
snare trapping you into communion with 
devils. 

I have, on not a few occasions, been 
brought into contact with both men and 
women who have been caught, like moths in a 
candle-flame, by these false flashlights, and 
lured on to quicksands from which there was 
no saving them. When lost they shout out 
that they are saved. 

It looks as if the penalty of trying to force 
the hand of God, and of lifting the veil to 
communicate with the Great Beyond was 
total loss of that childlike and clinging faith 
which is the priceless inheritance of the sons 
of God — " Unless you become as a little 
child," 

Up to date in rare cases only have I been 
able to persuade necromancers to shake off 
Spiritistic practices and to return once more 
to the Church of their childhood. They tell 
you that they have actually seen, and that it 
is more blessed to have seen than to believe. 
When their choice lies between Christianity 
and Necromancy they choose the latter. 



FOREWORD xi 

To some of us who have studied Spirit- 
ualism in many of its phases, the wonder is 
that any persons, with common sense and ap- 
preciation of life's values, can allow them- 
selves to be sucked into such a vortex. 

Firstly, let me remind you that no one at- 
tending a seance in which spirits from the 
vast deep make themselves heard or seen 
can prove that their spirit visitants are the 
creatures they claim to be. How can any one 
disprove them to be satanic spirits? You 
may be sure that evil spirits can quite as 
cleverly personate the dead as music-hall ar- 
tists do the living. 

Secondly, let me ask you, what have spirits, 
after thousands of years practice, revealed 
to mankind calculated to be of any practical 
service to humanity? As yet they have not 
even solved the problem as to what is a sar- 
dine, or what a new-laid egg. 

There is a great deal to say against 
Spiritism, but not much that I know of for 
it. But I shall be reminded that it has dis- 
proved the doctrine for materialism and 
proved the immortality of man. Not so; it 
may have only proved the immortality of de- 
mons. It is a queer blend of immortality and 



xii FOREWORD 

infidelity. If the spirits, who speak through 
mediums, live, on the other side, the lives 
they describe, then the other side ought to 
be the soul's probation for this — not this for 
that. 

My advice to all readers of this spirited ex- 
posure of Spiritualism is to shun it as they 
would cocaine. In neither drug is to be dis- 
covered the Will of God, which is man's end 
in life, but in both may be found ruin of 
body and loss of soul. This very morn- 
ing I heard of a girl, who, being told in a 
seance by her deceased lover that he would 
not live on the other side without her, 
drowned herself to join him, not, I fancy, in 
heaven — "Notum fac mihi, Domine, finem 
meum." 

Bernard Vaughan, S.J. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword ix 

CHAPTER 

I "Spiritualism" — What is It? . . . 1 

II How Spiritualism Tries to Distort the 

Old Testament 13 

III Spiritualism and the New Testament . 33 

IV Spiritualism and the Churches ... 58 

V The Phenomenal Side of Spiritualism 

and Its Effect on the Health . . 99 

VI The Danger of Fraud of All Kinds at 

Seances . 137 



THE MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 



THE MENACE OF 
SPIRITUALISM 

CHAPTER I 

"SPIRITUALISM" — WHAT IS IT? 

Spiritualism ! What does it all mean? 
Can it do us any good? Has it really come 
to stay? 

These are the questions the ordinary man 
and woman, and the British public in general, 
are now beginning to ask in downright earn- 
est. For a long time what is known as Spirit- 
ualism nourished in comparative obscurity. 
Apart from its own particular adherents, 
and those who, existent in every age, make a 
point of inquiring into all kinds of cults and 
philosophies, there were few who took even 
the remotest interest in it. The vast major- 
ity, perhaps, had never even heard of it ; and 
to the bulk, at least, of the middle classes, like 
Psychical Research, it was either a mere 



2 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

term, or it was classified in the same category 
as ghosts and hobgoblins, and meant nothing 
to them. Then came the Great War, and 
once again the air filled with the cries and 
lamentations of the bereaved ; the cries of 
mothers mourning for their sons, the cries of 
wives sorrowing for their husbands. It was 
merely a repetition of the same old story, 
slaughter and desolation, and, in the words 
of the prophet, "Rachel weeping for her 
children, because they were not ' ' ; but it was 
a repetition which has proved that the world, 
despite its boastful pretensions to an en- 
lightened Christianity and civilization, has 
not advanced very far along the path of 
gentleness and toleration; has not, as yet, 
set its foot upon the one and only path of 
real progress. And, as in all times of exces- 
sive sorrow and bereavement, so now, 
"Rachel weeping for her children, refused to 
be comforted," those who were hit hard and 
felt acutely the pangs of the empty chair and 
missing form at the family table, turned to 
channels other than mere human agency for 
consolation. Some, indeed, there were who, 
not entirely ruled and regulated by the rush, 
and tear, and helter-skelter of passing events, 



"SPIRITUALISM"— WHAT IS IT? 3 

found what they sought in prayer, in the quiet 
old-time faith that had sufficed their fore- 
fathers; but the remainder, those whose 
minds responded to the twentieth century's 
predominating cry for constantly increasing 
speed, and whose thoughts were tuned to 
keep pace with telephones and wireless, de- 
manded instant demonstration. All the 
Church could do was to tell them to wait, to 
wait and hope, that Christ 's promise was one 
of revelation; but of a revelation they must 
not precipitate, must not expect till the hour 
of their own dissolution was at hand. But 
neither waiting nor watching appeals to the 
pioneers and supporters of twentieth-century 
hurry and dispatch. Life may be long; to 
the young an eternity, and no one can be ex- 
pected to wait that length of time for an as- 
surance on a question that concerns him in- 
timately. Is there another life or not? 
There must be no dallying, no equivocating. 
Something quick and decisive is asked for; 
something quick and decisive must be given. 
Proof — positive, immediate, unequivocal 
proof. 

That was the cry of this section of the dis- 
tressed, a section in the main composed of 



4 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

the upper and middle classes; those who are 
known as the quite common people shouldered 
their burdens more stoically. The toiling 
poor are accustomed to dallying — waiting 
and hoping form part of their daily curric- 
ulum. However, the cry found response. 
Just as the wailing of the infant or the neigh- 
ing of the horse on the steppes so often sum- 
mons wolves, and the lowing of the oxen in 
the jungle apparently calls into being jackals 
and tigers, so the frantic demands of these 
unhappy parents and widows conjured up 
those styling themselves mediums — spiritual- 
ists who, for fees (in most cases consider- 
able ones), declared their ability to provide 
instantaneous and definite proofs of another 
life, by evoking and conversing with the 
spirits of the dead. 

Their offers were hungrily accepted. 
Crowds flocked to their doors, and all the 
more readily and eagerly, since their methods 
were obviously in accordance with the views 
of such men as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir W. F. 
Barrett and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who 
through their writing chiefly, had given the 
cause of Spiritualism, as a whole, an immense 
impetus. 



"SPIRITUALISM"— WHAT IS IT? 5 

Soon, going to a medium, like consulting 
the oracles of old, became a fashion; it af- 
forded novelty and excitement, and appealed 
especially to the upper and middle classes, 
because it was too costly a form of entertain- 
ment ever to be shared by their poorer 
brethren. Those who had not lost relatives 
in the war, as well as the bereaved, became 
bitten with the craze for Spiritualism; the 
papers took it up ; the magazines encouraged 
it ; and now, bidding fair to rival some of the 
periodical madnesses of old, it has swept, 
with an epidemic-like force throughout the 
length and breadth of Great Britain. 

Yet it has apparently given satisfaction 
only to the few; the masses are still hope- 
lessly in the cold, still hopelessly unconvinced, 
still hopelessly inquiring. 

Spiritualism! What does it all mean? 
Can it do us any real good? Has it actually 
come to stay? 

Now, it is not very easy to affix any specific 
creed to Spiritualism, since it throws open its 
doors to people of varying and divergent 
ideas and beliefs, and has no very distinct 
dogmas of its own. However, it professes 
absolute confidence in the ability of living 



6 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

man to bring, at will, the spirit world within 
the close range of his senses, and to get into 
actual and immediate contact with it; and it 
is on this belief alone that the whole fabric 
of Spiritualism appears to be based. To 
substantiate this statement I need only quote 
at random from the definitions of Spiritual- 
ism by avowed disciples of the creed. 

Dr. J. M. Peebles in his work "What is 
Spiritualism, ' ' published 1903, says (p. 5), 
"Spiritualism is the philosophy of life and 
the direct antithesis of materialization. 
Spiritualism does not create truth, but it is a 
living witness to the truth of a future exist- 
ence. It reveals it ; it demonstrates, describ- 
ing its inhabitants, their occupations, etc." 

Whilst Leon Denis in his book "Christi- 
anity and Spiritualism,' ' translated from the 
French by Helen Draper Speakman (pub- 
lished by Eider & Sons), says on page 28: 
"We shall thus arrive at the conclusion that 
His (referring to Christ's) doctrine and that 
of the spirits are identical, that Spiritualism 
is simply the return to primitive Christian- 
ity under more definite form, and we shall do 
so with an imposing train of experimental 
proofs which will render impossible the re- ' 



"SPIRITUALISM"— WHAT IS IT? 7 

newed misrepresentation of the ideas of 
Christ." 

These " experimental proofs" can, I ven- 
ture to think, only refer to experiments with 
spirits, presumably those of the dead, and 
since reference to this same source of con- 
viction will be found in most, if not, indeed, 
all the definitions of Spiritualism by Spirit- 
ualists, I can only again emphasize my state- 
ment that the real basis of Spiritualism, the 
stone on which the whole structure pivots, is 
a positive confidence in the ability of man, 
living, breathing man — man on and belong- 
ing to this material plane, to conjure up the 
denizens of the spiritual world, to see, to 
touch, to converse with them at will, and to 
keep them actively employed at his beck and 
call, preparing all kinds of phenomena for the 
gratification of his own peculiar whims and 
pleasures. Once prove this belief to be based 
on a no more substantial foundation than in- 
flated fancy, hallucinations, delusions, gross 
exaggeration and barefaced trickery, and the 
whole edifice of Spiritualism would at once 
break in pieces and crumble away into mere 
nothingness. So far, however, in spite of the 
countless and more than partially successful 



8 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

efforts that are continually being made to ob- 
tain this proof, something every now and 
then crops np to which skepticism and ma- 
terialism can offer no very convincing ex- 
planation ; and this something has invariably 
succeeded in not merely keeping Spiritualism 
from being snuffed out altogether, but oc- 
casionally — as is happening at the present 
moment — in imparting to it a life and a luster 
that arouses grave apprehensions in the 
minds of the more thoughtful and rational of 
us, and that would arouse even graver ones, 
did we not, deriving our inspirations from 
similar happenings in the past, believe such 
an outburst to be merely spasmodic. 

But more of this anon. To revert to the def- 
inition of Spiritualism. I have endeavored 
to show that Spiritualism as a creed — if one 
may so designate it — relies mainly on one 
distinguishing principle, and that, apart 
from this single outstanding feature, it de- 
rives its coloring, chiefly, from the country in 
which it happens to be located. In India, for 
example, its teachings are a reflection of The- 
osophy and confused Paganism; whilst in 
England and America the tenets it advances 
largely take their color from a contorted and 



"SPIRITUALISM"— WHAT IS IT? 9 

perverted rendering of the Old and New 
Testaments. It is this infusion of so many 
diverse views and credulities into Spiritual- 
ism that has led some people to attribute to 
it a much larger individual doctrine and 
literature than that to which it is really en- 
titled; and to regard it as having two dis- 
tinct branches, namely the doctrinal and the 
phenomena, though the two are, in reality, so 
closely related to one another that any ab- 
solute separation is impossible'. However, 
for the purpose of criticism, I think it is well 
to deal with these two so-called branches 
separately. 

In the space allotted me I can do little 
more than merely allude to Spiritualism in 
its relation to Theosophy and other oriental 
schools of religious philosophy. I believe 
there is nothing in the teachings of Theos- 
ophy, which is about as heterogeneous a 
jumble of tenets and ideas as it is possible 
to conceive, i. e., a jumble of gnosticism, 
taken from three distinct schools, Neopla- 
tonism, Hermeticism, Eosicrucianism, Brah- 
manism, Zoroastrianism, Soman, Greek 
and Egyptian mythology, and countless 
other mythologies — to contradict the main 



10 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

principle of Spiritualism; on the contrary, 
as the majority of those professing Theoso- 
phy most certainly countenance, in a more 
or less restricted sense, and, under somewhat 
elastic conditions, practice Spiritualism, one 
may reasonably conclude that it is not only 
reconcilable with Theosophy, but that it may 
even be said to come within its tenets and, 
possibly, to have been in the beginning merely 
an offshoot from it. At the same time I be- 
lieve I am right in saying that there is a 
certain phase of Spiritualism to which a 
large number of Theosophists object, a phase 
which is termed Spiritism, and which signifies 
the resorting of the Spiritual-phenomena 
side of Spiritualism for merely idle and 
speculative purposes. 

Before passing on to the main subject of 
my criticism — Spiritualism in England — I 
should like to remark that it was rather un- 
fortunate for the cause of Spiritualism and 
Theosophy alike, that one of the founders 
of the Modern School of Theosophy in the 
East, Helen Petrovna Blavatsky, better 
known as H. P. B., after laying claim to such 
an extraordinary development of the so-called 
psychic faculty that she was brought into 



"SPIRITUALISM"— WHAT IS IT? 11 

touch and, one might say, was on terms of 
actual intimacy with entities on the very high- 
est spiritual planes (she is still regarded by 
the theosophical sages as an initiated disci- 
ple of the Mahatma, known as Morya, and 
included by them in the same category as 
Plato, Pythagoras, and other great moral 
expounders of the past), should eventually 
have been detected in an act or acts of 
common or garden fraud whilst producing 
some of her alleged spiritual phenomena. 
Had H. P. B. been a person of less exalted 
position her misdeeds might not have given 
rise to quite so much criticism; but being 
almost akin to a Mahatma her exposure not 
unnaturally led cynics to suggest that a cult 
founded by a person whose practices were 
far from being of a godlike nature, could 
be neither very sound nor very desirable. 
Besides, these cynics argued, the psychic 
properties to which the majority of her 
followers laid claim, since they obviously 
did not enable their owners to see beneath 
the surface, were of little practical use 
to them; and spirit guides, if they cannot 
warn us of danger and put us on our guard 
against people likely to abuse our confidence, 



12 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

cannot be reckoned of any great worth or 
value. 

Furthermore, the exposure of H. P. B. led 
outsiders to wonder whether the same in- 
fluences, spiritual or otherwise, to which she 
was subject, might not, also, be inspiring 
some of her adherents; whether, indeed, in 
the ranks of the more prominent and arro- 
gant members of the cults of Theosophy and 
Spiritualism — for both came under her wing 
— there might not be others equally daring, 
equally plausible and equally unscrupulous, 
who, taking advantage of the more ignorant, 
trustful and gullible members of the frater- 
nities, were laughing up their sleeves and, 
at the same time, fattening. As, however, 
I am reserving my comments on Spirit- 
ualism in India for another occasion, I will 
pass on now to the doctrinal branch of 
Spiritualism in England. 



CHAPTEE n 

HOW SPIKITUALISM TEIES TO DISTORT THE 
OLD TESTAMENT 

The center of Spiritualism, as is the case 
with the centers of most creeds and cults 
in this country, is in London, and the bulk 
of the Spiritualists in London profess an 
adulterated type of Christianity. 

"Spiritualists, like the Primitive 
Churches,' ' says Dr. J. M. Peebles, " believe 
in God the Father, ' ' 1 and he goes on to say : 
"Spiritualism is of God," adding that "the 
corner stone, the foundation pillar of Spirit- 
ualism, is spirit, and God is Spirit." 2 He 
seems to forget, however, that there are vari- 
ous kinds of spirits, that all are not of 
necessity good, and that the spirit that has 
inspired Spiritualism may belong to a very 

i"What is Spiritualism?" (p. 9). By J. M. Peebles, 
M.D., M.A. Published by Peebles Institute. Printed 1903. 
2 Same work, pp. 10-11. 

13 



14 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

different category from that which constitutes 
God. 

Indeed, if one might form an opinion as 
to what constitutes the corner stone of 
Spiritualism, from the type of Spiritualists 
one meets at seances, one might affirm that 
if spirit at all, that spirit is astonishingly 
worldly, to a large extent commercial, dis- 
tinctly grotesque and bizarre, and conse- 
quently not at all in accordance with any- 
thing the more thoughtful of us outside the 
ranks of Spiritualism would ascribe to the 
highest Spiritual Plane, least of all to a be- 
ing of such infinite wisdom and virtue as 
God. However, to continue, one need not 
be surprised, perhaps, that the propounders 
of Spiritualism — since it owes, in no small 
measure, its existence to an atmosphere of 
mysticism the ages have built round it — 
should profess to see in the Scriptures mys- 
teries and occult evidences far too profound 
to catch the eye of the more vulgar and less 
initiated materialist. 

Mr. John Page Hopps, in a pamphlet en- 
titled "Spiritualism in the Old Testament," 
goes so far as to describe the whole of the 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 15 

Old Testament as "a sealed book/' full of 
spirit appearances, spirit lights, spirit 
sounds, trance speaking and symbolism, at 
the same time he assures us that all such 
happenings are perfectly familiar to the 
modern Spiritualist. This same writer, like 
most Spiritualists, pitches upon the book of 
Ezekiel as being specially psychic, and sub- 
jects not only the prophet, but the Holy 
Spirit to whom the prophet attributes his 
powers, to a severe criticism. We are told, 
for example, that although Ezekiel was a 
medium, possessing the faculties both of 
clairvoyance and clairaudience, he was open 
to all kinds of spirit influences, good, bad 
and indifferent, and that it is simply foolish 
to consider all his inspirations as emanating 
from God. Mr. Hopps even suggests that 
it is very doubtful, according to the true 
(i. e., the psychic) interpretation of Ezekiel, 
if the Jehovah, who is alluded to as "the 
Lord," was, in reality, God Almighty; in 
fact he infers that the Jehovah of the Jews 
was merely a finite spirit — or band of spirits 
— of very varying power, who had taken the 
Hebrew race under his or their guardian- 



16 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

ship and found them very much of a hand- 
ful. In this latter respect, perhaps, some 
of us will agree with him. 

Mr. Hopps, like most so-called author- 
ities on Spiritualism and Psychism, is 
arrogant, and, as I shall endeavor to show 
later, highly fanciful and imaginative. 
That Ezekiel possessed very peculiar spirit- 
ual powers is, of course, clearly apparent; 
had he not possessed them he would not have 
been able to prophesy and predict; but it is 
equally apparent that he was no medium in 
the ordinary sense of the word, since, judg- 
ing from the glimpses we get of his character 
and mentality in the Scriptures, he must have 
been a man of no mean intellectual and states- 
manlike qualities, and, consequently, the very 
antithesis of the present-day medium, who 
is, as a rule, not only unintellectual and ill- 
informed, but occasionally both sensuous 
and sordid. Moreover, Ezekiel 's visions, 
inasmuch as they possessed unquestionable 
significance for his contemporaries — espe- 
cially for his countrymen to whom, in all prob- 
ability, they were by no means wholly enig- 
matical, might be said to have been of great 
national importance and interest. Can any 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 17 

one say the same of the visions and messages 
purporting to come through Spiritualistic 
mediums to-day? Far from being either 
grand, or ennobling, or even instructive, 
these messages are, without exception, tri- 
fling, unedifying, and footling, 1 and if, as Mr. 
Hopps suggests, not all of Ezekiel's visions 
emanated from the highest spiritual plane, 
though in this I disagree with him, it is per- 
fectly certain that very few of the visions of 
a modern medium emanate from any plane 
save the lowest. But to proceed, no matter 
whether he possesses the psychic faculty or 
not, the ordinary Spiritualist invariably ex- 
hibits a tendency to imagine and invent. 
Mr. Hopps, for instance, after again trying 
to convince us that Ezekiel held regular 
seances after the nature of those held by 
Spiritualists to-day, tries to establish his 
case by asserting that the phrase, "I sat in 
mine house and the elders of Judah sat be- 
fore me" (Ezekiel viii. 1), refers to an or- 
dinary Spiritualistic seance, something in the 
nature of modern table-turning or trance 

iNo better instance of this can be afforded than the so- 
called spirit communications recorded in Sir Oliver Lodge's 
"Raymond" (published by Methuen & Co., 1916). 



18 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

mediumsliip ; and he subsequently states 
that the whole book of Ezekiel consists of 
a collection of records of similar sittings. 
He forgets, however, to add that whereas 
Ezekiel was never, as far as these verses 
show, convicted of falsehood and barefaced 
trickery, the majority of present-day medi- 
ums have been proved guilty of both; so 
that between Ezekiel and those whom Mr. 
Hopps designates his successors, there is, 
after all, a very remarkable difference, a 
difference upon which I will expatiate later 
on. 

As one would suppose, Ezekiel is by no 
means the only prophet or patriarch whose 
dignity is assailed by Spiritualists. Isaiah 
is similarly likened to a modern clairvoyant, 
while the phrase "and it shall come to pass, 
as soon as I am gone from thee, that the 
Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither 
I know not" (1 Kings xviii. 12), is by some 
miraculous system of distortion, worthy of 
the most ingenious species of rack ever in- 
vented, made to suggest levitation, i. e., that 
Elijah was to be lifted off the ground after 
the manner of a table at a twentieth-century 
Spiritualistic seance. Now I have seen many 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 19 

tables slightly raised from the floor at 
seances, and it has always appeared to me 
— as well as to others present — that such 
levitation was not altogether incompatible 
with very materialistic trickery, which might 
very well have been performed by one of the 
sitters without any spirit intervention what- 
soever. Indeed, I feel quite certain that 
there is nothing in this kind of levitation 
that could not be easily enacted by a con- 
juror, not necessarily as skillful as Messrs. 
Maskelyne and Devant. 

I have, however, never yet seen, at any 
seance or elsewhere, a case of complete 
spiriting away, such as Obadiah prophesied 
would happen to Elijah, and which event- 
ually did happen. (2 Kings ii. 11.) Per- 
haps some of our Spiritualistic friends will 
affirm such feats have actually come within 
their experience, and will be able to name 
the mediums who have accomplished them. 
Indeed, they should be able to do so, since 
they declare Elijah was simply a highly de- 
veloped psychic, like the Fox Sisters, 
H. P. B., or Eusapia Palladino (whose exits 
from this material plane were not, I believe, 
accomplished in celestial chariots, an omis- 



20 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

sion on the part of Jehovah for which be- 
lievers in these notorious mediums will no 
doubt be able to proffer some kind of apology 
or explanation). Spiritualism, of course, 
claims Abraham, also, as one of its disciples, 
and his converse with angels is reckoned in 
the same category as the ' ' spirit materializa- 
tions" which are taking place to-day. 

"Patriarchs, prophets and seers in Abra- 
ham's and Isaiah's time conversed with 
spirits and angels according to the Scrip- 
tures,' ' Dr. Peebles writes, 1 "and why 
should not we? Neither God nor His laws 
have changed." Very possibly not, Dr. 
Peebles, but man apparently has, for seldom 
do we see nowadays in any class or profes- 
sion the dignity and grandeur of character 
that we find in Moses, Samuel, Isaiah and 
other of the Hebrew leaders and prophets, 
and we do not hesitate to say that great in- 
deed would be our disappointment were we 
to hope to find men possessing these char- 
acteristics in the ranks of modern medium- 
ship. 

Another point to bear in mind, when con- 

i"What is Spiritualism?" (pp. 5-6). J. M. Peebles, 
M.D., M.A. 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 21 

fronted with these impious comparisons, is 
that the Divine visitations and manifesta- 
tions in the Old Testament were never re- 
sorted to, saving on very particular and 
momentous occasions, and for some very 
specific and rational purpose, as, for exam- 
ple, when God spoke to the child Samuel to 
warn him of the impending fate of Eli's 
house, and to Moses, from the burning bush, 
to command him to deliver the children of 
Israel out of the hands of the Egyptians. 
It is obviously quite otherwise with regard 
to modern mediumship, which is resorted to 
on every possible occasion, and often on the 
most trivial and ridiculous pretext. Hence, 
perhaps, it is small wonder that the revela- 
tions made by " spirit guides" or " controls' ' 
are invariably silly, and occasionally obscene 
and even blasphemous; and small wonder, 
too, that these spirits, far from telling us 
anything new, or instructive, or elevating, 
merely convey the impression that the spirit 
world from which they hail must be a strange 
mixture of a public elementary schoolroom, 
a pot-house bar and a lunatic asylum, and 
that we should be well advised to cling to this 
material life for as long a time as possible. 



22 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Spiritualists will of course assert that what 
I have just alluded to is Spiritism, and not 
Spiritualism, that Spiritism naturally puts 
one in touch with the denizens of the lowest 
spirit planes, but that Spiritualism enables 
its followers to see visions and witness 
manifestations of the same nature as were 
seen and witnessed by Moses, Isaiah, and 
other Biblical characters of the same degree 
of piety. My reply to this is that it is really 
a distinction with very little difference, that 
the seance of the Spiritualist generally owes 
its origin to much the same motives as the 
seance of the Spiritist, and that, at all events, 
there is nothing in the characters of even 
the best of the Spiritualists and Spiritists, 
any more than there is in the characters of 
any of us mere laymen and outsiders — to 
warrant visitations and — if one likes to call 
them so — phenomena — from such celestial 
sources as those specified in Holy Writ. 
As I have already stated, Abrahams and 
Isaiahs no longer exist, and, in comparison, 
the best of us to-day are very ordinary, very 
mediocre. 

Another point that appeals to me in the 
argument that the phenomena claimed by 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 23 

Spiritualists as emanating from the same 
spirit sources as those mentioned in the 
Bible, cannot be genuine, is that those who 
witness the phenomena do not experience 
even the slightest sensation of fear. Now 
most of us, I think, believe in spirits that 
appear spontaneously, that is to say, with- 
out the connivance of a medium or the assist- 
ance of the trumpet or table (indeed, the 
evidence relating to such phenomena is so 
accumulative and corroborative that few 
would attempt to question it), and those of 
us who have had any actual experience with 
these spontaneous apparitions, popularly 
designated ghosts, know only too well the 
awe and terror they inspire in humans and 
animals alike. 

It was the same in Biblical days. When 
confronted with the angel of the Lord 
Balaam's ass falls down, whilst its rider 
bows his head to shut the vision out 
(Numbers xxii. 27-31) ; and Moses, when the 
Lord calls to him from the burning bush, 
hides his face, for he is afraid to look upon 
God (Exodus iii. 6). How different is this 
behavior from that of the mediums of to- 
day, who are acclaimed by Spiritualists as 



M MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

the successors of Moses, Balaam, and other 
prophets of the Scriptures. These Spirit- 
ualistic mediums profess to see spirit after 
spirit with the utmost sang-froid. They 
have only to receive a fee, or the promise of 
one, and spirits of all sorts come with the 
regularity of an automaton, whilst they — 
the mediums— do not even turn a hair. 
Besides, I have never heard of a dog that 
has been present on any such occasion — 
and those of us who have tested dogs in 
haunted houses know how susceptible they 
are to fear — being in the least degree 
terrified. 

Can it be that these mediums and Spirit- 
ualists are holier than Moses? If they are 
not, how else can they account for their total 
unconcern, and for the complete absence of 
either awe, fear, or astonishment at any of 
their exhibitions? 

Just to show to what an extent this craze 
for the so-called psychic faculty has " caught 
on," I cannot refrain from referring to a 
little book sent me the other day, entitled 
"The Ministry of Angels." 1 "We are pre- 

i By Mrs. Joy Snell (published 1919, by G. Bell & Sons, 
Ltd). 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 25 

pared for something wonderful from the 
following passage in the preface : 

"It (the book) has been written because angels have 
told her (the authoress) that rare psychic powers have 
been bestowed on her, and she has been permitted to see 
what is hidden from the vast majority of mankind until 
after death." 

But forewarned as we are, we are certainly 
not ready for what follows. It shocks us 
immeasurably. 

The authoress states that when a child 
she awoke one night to find the room flooded 
with sunlight, and she goes on to describe 
two figures that suddenly appeared to her 
(pp. 11-12): 

"One was that of a man," she says, "the other that of 
a woman. They were clad in shining, white robes. 
Around the head of each was a bright halo. The man 
stretched forth his hand and said: 'Be not dismayed; 
blessed shalt thou be/ Then the woman spoke and said : 
'Behold the Saviour ! And I am His mother/ " 

The authoress does not seem to have been 
seized with any of that fear that came upon 
the prophets of old, when in the presence of 
God or His angels, or that the disciples felt 



26 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

at the Transfiguration (St. Matthew xvii. 6), 
or when our Lord appeared to them after 
the Crucifixion (St. Luke xxiv. 37), but to 
have taken the most glorious and awe-in- 
spiring of all possible visions simply as a 
prognostication of her own death. It never 
seems to have occurred to her — as it most 
certainly would have occurred to most people 
— how very extraordinary it was that she 
should have been singled out from among 
all other earthly beings for such a visitation 
— a visitation of a nature that — as far as 
one knows — has certainly never taken place 
since the days of our Lord. 

Does the authoress imagine she possesses 
a character and qualities not only far — but 
immeasurably far superior to those of any 
of the countless human beings that have 
existed since the time of the Crucifixion, or 
does she attribute the phenomena to a de- 
velopment of psychic propensities which can 
certainly have no parallel? 

The more rational and reflective among 
us will, I think, incline to the belief that 
such a visitation was actually subjective, 
and hallucinatory, and prompted by nothing 
more than colossal self-estimation, an opin- 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 27 

ion which is more than justified by a further 
perusal — if patience permits — of the work. 
At any rate such testimony, since it is in no 
way corroborated, furnishes no proof what- 
ever either of so-called spirit mediumship 
or of a psychic faculty, but merely serves 
to illustrate, as I have said before, to what 
a pitch of abandonment and lack of self- 
restraint this mad craze for Spiritualism, 
and the notoriety it sometimes brings with 
it, has been carried. 

In accordance with this mad craze every 
reference to God and His angels appearing 
to, or communicating with man, to be met 
with in the Old Testament, is converted by 
Spiritualists into signifying the Almighty's 
approval and sanctioning of mediumship. 
In their attempt to force the Scriptures into 
reconciliation with the practices of their 
cult, they willfully blind themselves and 
those they seek to pervert, to this point — 
that it was one thing for God and His angels 
to demonstrate themselves spontaneously to 
man, and quite another thing for man to 
attempt, after 1 the fashion of the modern 
medium, to call up spirits, indiscriminately, 
from the tomb and elsewhere. There is 



28 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

certainly nothing whatever in anything God 
and His angels either said or did to warrant 
the assumption that they would sanction 
such proceedings. On the contrary, al- 
though there is an abundance of evidence 
in the Old Testament to show that God and 
the men he selected as His prophets and con- 
fidants fully recognized the fact that there 
were people (necromancers, sorcerers, 
witches, etc.) who knew, and were capable 
of putting into practice, the art of calling 
up genuine spirits, good and bad, and people 
who were able to perform all kinds of 
phenomena, sometimes through bond fide 
spirit agency, as, for example, Pharaoh's 
sorcerers (Exodus vii. 11-12), and sometimes 
through merely clever jugglery, it was 
against these people and their practices that 
God and His chosen representatives most 
sternly and uncompromisingly set their 
faces. If there is any doubt at all as to this, 
one has only to refer to the following: — 
Leviticus xx. 6, Leviticus xix. 31, Deuter- 
onomy xviii. 10-12, 1 Samuel xxviii. 3 and 9, 
2 Kings xxi. 6, Isaiah viii. 19, Exodus xxii. 
18. 
The mediumship of to-day, call it Spirit- 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 

ualism, Spiritism or what you will, is simply 
an attempt — albeit a feeble and in most 
cases abortive one — at imitation of the nec- 
romancy, sorcery, and spirit trafficking 
alluded to in the above texts, the so-called 
guides and controls — Joey Kings, Fedoras 
and other spirit entities — bearing a remark- 
able resemblance to what were once known 
as witches' familiars. 

Then — in those far-off Biblical times, 
when Chaldean and Egyptian magic had, 
without doubt, been developed to a very 
great degree, and man was in far closer 
touch with the primary elements in Nature 
than he finds it possible to be to-day, the nec- 
romancers, witches and the like were in all 
probability really able to conjure up spirits 
with comparative ease. But when these 
races gradually disappeared, their art seems 
— to a very large extent at least — to have 
perished with them. Other nations, the 
Greeks and Eomans, for instance, and, later 
still, the Moors and Arabs all made desperate 
attempts to get into touch with the dead, 
and in their day, too, apparently worked 
all sorts of phenomena and miracles; but it 
is very doubtful if success very often came 



30 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

to them, and it is more than likely that most 
of the wonders that were alleged to take 
place were manipulated through the assist- 
ance of an advanced knowledge of alchemy 
and jugglery, in which the Eastern nations, 
especially, in all times seem to have been 
past masters. The same sort of thing, the 
wild craving to pry into every forbidden mys- 
tery, the mad desire for power and notoriety, 
to be something quite distinct and differ- 
ent from anybody else, and the more sordid 
yet ever increasing love of riches, came 
steadily down through the centuries, con- 
taminating other races and nations, and in- 
ducing them, too, to try and force open the 
door connecting this and the other world or 
worlds. Italy, Austria, France, England, all 
in their turn, became infected — all witnessed 
the same grim and secret nocturnal meetings 
in closed chambers, the same frantic en- 
deavors to obtain satanic and other spirit 
aid by mystic symbolism, spells and incanta- 
tion, the same practice of resorting at mid- 
night to cross roads and other desolate 
places for the alleged purpose of holding 
witches' Sabbaths. 

Our records of those times, however, 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 31 

suggest very strongly that if the super- 
natural did occasionally respond to the in- 
cessant clamorings for it, most of the mani- 
festations were simply due to charlatanism 
and trickery. And so it is to-day. The 
methods that were employed by the Babylo- 
nian and Assyrian necromancers in the days 
of Moses and other of those old-world proph- 
ets still remain in obscurity. Every now and 
then, perhaps, something rather inexplic- 
able does occur at a seance, which makes one 
for a moment wonder if another key to fit 
the lock has at last been discovered, and in- 
tercourse with the spirit world, as practiced 
by the ancients, has at length been obtained ; 
but apprehensions on this score speedily 
vanish, for that something does not respond 
again, and one is assured that the occurrence 
was purely incidental and as unlooked-for on 
the part of the medium, as on the part of any 
one else present. But that does not alter 
the fact that by the Almighty, the God of 
the Bible, which we in this country, at any 
rate, have been taught to honor and respect, 
any attempt at trafficking with denizens of 
the spirit world, good or bad (for the former 
see 1 Samuel xxviii. 15, 2 Samuel xii. 23, 1 



S2 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Chronicles x. 13), no matter whether the 
attempt is successful or not, is denounced 
and forbidden. There must be no compro- 
mising, no equivocating with God, and if 
only, inasmuch as Spiritualism, citing Scrip- 
ture for its own purpose, would seek to win 
converts by giving them a fallacious and en- 
tirely wrong interpretation of the Jehovah 
of the Jews' views on these matters, it is 
baneful and dangerous, and instead of being 
encouraged, as the more thoughtless and 
ignorant among us are inclined to do, it 
should be ruthlessly exposed and banned. 



CHAPTER in 

SPIBITUALISM AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 

When we go on to consider the Spiritual- 
ists ? views with regard to the New Testa- 
ment, we find just the same barefaced at- 
tempts at contortion and perversion. The 
Christian belief that Jesus Christ was, and 
is God Incarnate is almost universally 
denied. Borrowing their terminology from 
Theosophy, many of the Spiritualists, even 
in this country, allude to our Lord as a great 
master, and by the majority, if not indeed 
by all of them, He is regarded as no more 
saintly, no more celestial than a medium, a 
few degrees, perhaps, more psychic and 
spirit-inspired than any present-day medium, 
but still one of precisely the same stock, and 
more or less — if not, indeed, quite — in the 
same category. 

Dr. J. M. Peebles, for instance, in refer- 
ring to our Lord, says : 

33 



34 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

"When that highly inspired man of Nazareth 
preached His radical doctrines in Palestine and per- 
formed His astonishing mediumistic works, etc." (vide 
"What is Spiritualism," pp. 5-6), 

and again, 

"Spiritualists, if intelligent, don't deny the existence 
of God — nor of Jesus of Nazareth, the mediumistic 
man" (same work, p. 10) ; 

whilst Leon Denis again in ' l Christianity and 
Spiritualism" says: 

"Jesus came, a powerful spirit and Divine missionary, 
an inspired medium" (p. 22). 

And these views will be found to tally with 
those of practically all Spiritualists who cite 
the New Testament in their cause. 

Christ, Whose spotless life and gentle and 
humane disposition made Him not merely 
stand out as quite distinct from any of the 
men and women of His time, but as equally 
distinct from any of His predecessors or 
successors, is fetched from off the pedestal, 
on which the love and more than justifiable 
adoration of centuries has placed Him, and 
dragged through the mire. One cannot, in- 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 35 

deed, speak strongly enough on the subject. 
One can only say this, that any attempt to 
classify one of such infinite and unparal- 
leled grace, mental beauty, and moral perf ec : 
tions as our Blessed Lord, with those who, 
more often than not, prove to be of sordid 
nature, inferior intellect, and highly question- 
able morals, namely mediums, is both blas- 
phemous in the extreme and absurd, and one 
can only conclude that those who are capable 
of such a classification are either hopeless 
lunatics (more dangerous than many of those 
imprisoned in asylums), or else that they 
owe their inspirations to the most malignant 
and mischievous type of spirit, the only type 
which, in my opinion, is likely to respond to 
the beck and call of human beings. 

After such profanity one is not surprised 
at anything a Spiritualist asserts. There- 
fore the following quotation (vide p. 27 of 
" Christianity, Ohurchianity or Spiritual- 
ism,' ' by J. M. Peebles, M.D.) "true 
Spiritualism and true Christianity are es- 
sentially one" does not give us the shock it 
otherwise might have done. The mind that 
is capable of such a grotesquely fallacious 
representation of Jesus Christ as that pre- 



36 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

sented by Dr. Peebles is capable of any out- 
rageous fallacy, and it is only in keeping with 
his unconquerable habit of perversion, that 
he should persuade himself and try to per- 
suade others that the inimitable creed of 
Christianity is merely another name for his 
own unwholesome, illogical and ephemeral 
cult of Spiritualism. 

Christ's teaching, as gleaned from the 
mere text of the New Testament, strikes 
most readers as the essence of directness 
and simplicity, quite in harmony with His 
character; but Spiritualism, the true Spirit- 
ualism Dr. Peebles and others boast about, 
invests everything Christ said or did with 
an air of profound mystery and subtle 
meaning. The parables that perfectly well 
explain themselves to readers of any age 
and with any intelligence at all, are declared 
to be only interpretable to psychics and ini- 
tiates in the innermost mysteries of Higher 
Thought, and the texts usually quoted in sup- 
port of these assertions (namely St. Matthew 
xiii. 10-11 and St. Mark iv. 11-12), are also 
fondly believed to prove conclusively that 
Christ in selecting the Apostles, chose them 
solely for their alleged mediumistic powers. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 37 

Spiritualists cannot, or will not, realize that 
this act of selection marked a most unique 
and momentous occasion, and that the 
Apostles, after the call, owed their increased 
wisdom and power to perform miracles, not 
to any such sordid, unequivocally denounced 
agency as necromancy, or, to use the modern 
term, mediumship, but wholly to Divine — as 
utterly distinct from ordinary spirit — influ- 
ence. Christ obviously chose His Apostles 
for their characters — they were the type of 
men most likely to make sound and capable 
preachers, and to carry on His mission of 
love and moral reformation ; men possessing 
attributes of a nature very different from 
that characterizing the so-called psychist 
and medium of to-day. But, if any further 
proof of this be needed, one has only to com- 
pare the miracles Christ and His disciples 
wrought with the trumpery phenomena pro- 
duced by these mediums. Christ not only 
healed the blind, the halt, the maimed and 
those suffering from such incurable diseases 
as leprosy, but He brought back the dead to 
life, and made the tossing, roaring sea lie 
still and silent. Could any of the present- 
day professional mediums, with all their 



38 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

boasted super-normal and highly developed 
spiritual faculties, do the same? No, they 
could not. Far from doing what Christ and 
His Apostles did, for the good of mankind, 
mediums never, through their alleged spirit 
phenomena and spirit influence, perform any- 
thing really useful, or beneficial or even ex- 
ceptionally wonderful. Far from restoring 
the blind, or raising the dead, they cannot 
even cure, on the spot, an ordinary cold in 
the head, make the hair grow again on the 
head of a middle-aged or long bald old per- 
son, or cause a fresh natural tooth to sud- 
denly usurp the place of one that is badly de- 
cayed. They cannot even with a word or 
wave of their hand stop a bird in full flight 
in the air, or bring to a halt, by a mere glance, 
an earwig or a black beetle. To give them 
their due, however, they do not attempt to do 
the really marvelous — perhaps they are not 
quite sure of the capacities of their friends 
on the other side, who obviously have not 
much in common with St. Peter nor St. John 
— but content themselves with trying to 
make trumpets speak, tambourines dance, 
tables and chairs rise and walk, and flowers 
and sometimes fish — even eels — appear ap- 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 39 

parently from nowhere ; occasionally varying 
their program with materializations, 
which "phenomena," in reality, are very 
feeble, unconvincing and not at all alarming 
spirit impersonations, usually by "controls" 
and other professed denizens from the spirit 
world. But whereas Christ and His Apostles 
were always successful in their undoubted 
miracles, "mediums" are not infrequently 
detected in the most puerile and vulgar acts 
of deception and trickery. 

There is really no similarity whatever 
between Christ and His Apostles and the 
modern medium and Spiritualist ; indeed, the 
gulf of differences separating them is so 
wide that it could not be bridged. 

Christ's doctrine of repentance is tacitly 
accepted as a possible modifier in the chain 
of reincarnation (reincarnation being a 
theory in which the majority, at least, of 
Spiritualists, even those who profess what 
they term "true" Christianity, believe), but 
His equally essential teachings with regard 
to forgiveness are discountenanced and 
ignored. Spiritualists apparently are much 
divided as to what happens to the soul after 
death. Some, as may be gathered from cer- 



40 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

tain passages in Sir Oliver Lodge's "Bay- 
mond, ,, believe that man goes on in his im- 
material state from very much the same place 
as he left off in his physical body, that the 
spirit world is merely an ethereal counter- 
part of this, containing houses like ours, 
though made only of a sort of emanation 
from this earth, and places — presumably 
shops and public-houses — where clothes 
made from a species of decayed worsted, 
cigars composed of ethers, gases and es- 
sences, and, of course, whiskies-and-sodas 
(without the last-named, according to the 
great majority of mediums, no life, spiritual 
or otherwise, would seem to be complete) 
could be procured. Such a view of another 
life — so utterly contradictory to the teach- 
ings of Jesus Christ — appears to me very 
wild and extravagant, but, as a correspondent 
of the Sunday Times in the issue for 30th 
September, 1917, remarks, "we must not take 
Sir Oliver Lodge too seriously"; still it finds 
not a few supporters, and these may be found 
chiefly in the ranks of those Spiritualists and 
Psychical Eesearchers, who, having an un- 
reasoning respect for titles, blindly accept 
anything a man possessing one may happen 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 41 

to say, no matter bow irrational and footling 
his remarks may appear to saner and less 
easily influenced people. Another view, and 
the one generally adopted by those Spirit- 
ualists in this country, who profess to be 
what they are pleased to term "true" 
Christians, is that the soul, on parting with 
the material body at physical dissolution, 
enters the lowest spiritual planes, i.e., those 
in closest contact to this world, where it re- 
mains for just as long as its passions and 
earthly cravings and tendencies remain with 
it. This view, to some extent at least, tallies 
with many Churchmen's opinions with re- 
gard to a Purgatory or intermediate state, 
and finds much support in Christ's actual 
teachings ; but, as might be expected by any 
one who knows them, the Spiritualists who 
embrace it soon fly off to something wildly 
improbable, and uncorroborated, saving by 
their own mad, freakish fancies, and ignorant, 
if not willful, Biblical misrepresentations and 
distortions. The doctrine of a heaven is ac- 
cepted under the theosophical camouflage of 
"the highest spiritual planes," whilst that 
of a hell is wholly discredited, the vilest and 
most earth-tied of spirits, though confined to 



42 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

the lowest spiritual planes, being believed to 
have the power to wander there ad libitum, 
indulging themselves to excess in all their 
old passions, and perfectly able, when the 
mood seizes them, or some one invokes them, 
to get into immediate touch with the material 
world, whose inhabitants they can tempt and 
annoy at will. 

Those of us who believe in hauntings and 
in disturbances in houses and localities by 
spirits, which apparently come there spon- 
taneously, must accept the theory that there 
is a spirit world — perhaps more than one — 
very close to this world, but there is no actual 
proof that its denizens were ever of our flesh 
and blood, or anything to discountenance the 
possibility, if not, indeed probability, either 
that they be demons such as are referred to 
in more than one passage of the New Testa- 
ment (St. Matthew xii. 27, Acts xix. 13-14), 
or that they belong to one or other of the 
types of spirit recorded in Isaiah xiii. 21. 
But the doctrine — taught and practiced by 
all Spiritualists — to which Christians and, 
especially, Catholics, take the very greatest 
exception, is that of the invoked intercourse 
between the dead and the living. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 43 

Taking advantage of the fact that many 
Christians and Churchmen believe that we 
who are here on earth should pray for spirits 
in the intermediate state, i.e., those capable 
of rising to a higher sphere, and on the other 
hand that spirits who have passed over should 
pray for those left behind in the physical 
world, Spiritualists have construed such a 
momentous happening as the Transfiguration 
and such passages as those contained in 1 
Peter iii. 19, 1 Peter iv. 6, and Revelations 
vi. 10, into signifying full license to mediums 
and others of their ilk, to get in touch with 
spirits of the dead whenever the mood (or 
prospect of money) seizes them. Now the 
Bible does not deny the possibility of the 
dead returning on rare occasions and for 
some very specific reason, but nothing save 
the wildest and most perverted stretch of the 
imagination could metamorphose the Trans- 
figuration, or any of the texts I have men- 
tioned, or any other passages in the Bible, 
into signifying sanction for such inter- 
course with the dead as is alleged to be prac- 
ticed by the present-day medium. 

Mediums, however much they may pre- 
tend to the contrary, and be backed up in 



44 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

their pretensions by such would-be authori- 
ties on occult matters as Blavatsky and cer- 
tain titled scientists who are posing as Psy- 
chical Researchers, know absolutely nothing 
as to what govern conditions on the other 
side. Samuel, when called up by the witch 
of Endor, sternly rebuked Saul for bringing 
him back, hence it is quite conceivable that 
the efforts made by mediums to forcibly com- 
municate with the spirits of the dead, and 
through their agency to perform all kinds 
of phenomena, may, even though unsuccess- 
ful (which, I believe, is almost invariably the 
case) entail a very considerable amount of 
suffering on those who are invoked. 

Surely this is a probability meriting our 
very gravest consideration. In any case the 
mere thought of those we love and respect 
being forced to respond to the call of mere 
strangers, people out to gratify their curi- 
osity and fill their purses, is revolting in the 
extreme, and for this reason, chiefly, per- 
haps, the Catholic Church, and, indeed, all 
Christian Churches, as well as all really hu- 
mane and thoughtful people strongly con- 
demn seances, both public and private ones 
alike. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 45 

But there is another danger in connection 
with the practice of Spiritualism, which I 
may as well deal with here, when specializ- 
ing on the religious and moral aspects of the 
question, and that is the effects of these at- 
tempts at spirit intercourse on the charac- 
ters of the living people who partake in 
them. 

The unreliable and often mischievous na- 
ture of the messages obtained at sittings 
clearly demonstrates that such messages do 
not emanate either from intelligent or holy 
sources, and that if they come from bond 
fide spirits, these spirits can only be on a 
very low plane, and are therefore in no way 
calculated to improve either the mind or the 
morals. 

It is, I believe, a fact that can be well sub- 
stantiated, that the majority of mediums at 
all events — people who have been persuaded 
to develop their so-called psychic faculties 
and devote the bulk of their time to going 
into trances (i.e., yielding up their minds to 
whatever controlling spirit cares to come 
along), to automatic writing, crystal gazing, 
and table turning-r-speedily degenerate, and 
in the end become absolutely demoralized and 



46 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

untrustworthy. That is a fact, I repeat, 
which I have reasons for believing can be 
thoroughly well confirmed, as can also the 
fact that many of the people who continually 
attend seances, develop manias which event- 
ually spoil their lives and not infrequently 
lead to suicide. Can, I ask, such happenings 
be due to any agency that is beneficial or de- 
sirable, whether spirit or otherwise ? It must 
be remembered that there were Spiritualists 
in the days of the New Testament — a set of 
people quite distinct from the disciples and 
followers of Christ, with regard to whom 
both our Lord and His Apostles uttered 
many grave warnings (see St. Matthew xii. 
27, St. Matthew xxiv. 24-26, Acts xix. 13-14, 
Galatians i. 8-9, Revelations xxii. 18-19), and 
it is in these Spiritualists or necromancers, 
rather than in any of the miracle workers of 
the Old Testament, that the present-day 
mediums and their supporters find their coun- 
terparts. There is, indeed, a similarity be- 
tween them that is most marked and clearly 
perceptible to any but the hopelessly stupid 
or willfully blind. 

It will doubtless be protested again by cer- 
tain Spiritualists, those who, claiming to have 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 4*7 

got beyond the stage of seeking for mere 
physical demonstrations, assert that they are 
quite distinct from Spiritists, as they some- 
what superciliously designate them, that the 
visions they see and the messages they re- 
ceive are of a very superior order, almost, 
indeed, if not quite, identical with those seen 
and received by the Apostles. Certain of this 
fraternity have gone so far as to tell me 
that they have visited, whilst in trances, the 
most consecrated and zealously exclusive 
parts of Heaven, and frequently conversed 
with saints and some of the very holiest of 
the great teachers and thinkers of the past — 
privileges, they assured me, that were 
strictly confined to devotees of Spiritualism 
and initiates in all its innermost mysteries. 
In order to give an air of authority to these 
pretensions they resort again to the Scrip- 
tures, this time to the New Testament, and 
pointing to St. Peter, St. John and other of 
the Apostles, assume that in them there are 
evidences of their own ability to come in 
touch with the Divine side of the spirit world. 
What the Apostles did, they argue, we can 
do; their authority is ours; for they only 
possessed psychic faculties similar to ours. 



48 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

They forget, however, as I have already en- 
deavored to explain, that the Apostles lived 
in a time of the greatest moment in the 
world's history; that they belonged to a race 
specially selected and watched over by God; 
that the gifts bestowed on them were only 
apparent after their call — there is nothing to 
prove they had the so-called psychic faculty 
prior to this event — that though it is true they 
saw visions, and heard voices, and spoke in 
strange tongues, etc., it is also equally true 
they performed miracles of the greatest pos- 
sible benefit to their fellow-creatures (which 
is certainly not the case with any of the pres- 
ent-day Spiritualists) ; and that they were 
all men — with the exception of Judas, who 
owed his downfall to a national weakness 
taken advantage of by the devil — of the most 
exceptional moral character, which, as I have 
pointed out before, cannot possibly be said 
of the modern Spiritualists ; so that the lat- 
ter, whether initiates of the very highest 
order or not, have really no warrant what- 
ever for the spiritual privileges to which 
they lay claim, and consequently there is little 
reason, if any, for assigning them to a differ- 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 49 

ent and separate category from that of the 
ordinary Spiritist. 

For instances of the many disastrous ef- 
fects Spiritualism — albeit the higher branch 
of the cnlt — has on character, and to show 
to what an extent human egotism, vanity 
and self-importance are fostered by it, I can- 
not do better than refer to a work entitled 
' 'Talks with the Dead." It is edited — and, 
from what the context suggests, presumably 
written— by John Lobb, F.R.G.S., F.R.Hist. 
S., and published by a firm called after his 
name. The book is well garnished with texts, 
as, per example, on the title page we find 
"And there appeared unto them Elias with 
Moses; and they were talking with Jesus " 
(St. Mark ix. 4), and on the page opposite the 
title page, under a photograph purporting 
to be that of "one of the editor's band of 
spirit ministers" we get, "Are they not all 
ministering spirits sent forth to minister?" 
(Hebrews i. 14), and everywhere one is met 
with attempts to compare the mediumship 
of to-day with the Divine inspiration and 
highest spiritual agency of Old and New 
Testament days. See, for example, page 86, 



50 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

where we read these remarkable lines : ' ' The 
second chapter (i.e. of Acts) contains an ac- 
count of the first seance held by the disciples 
after Christ's Ascension"; needless to say, 
one looks for it in vain ; page 85, where we find 
that the angel that appeared unto Moses in 
a flame of fire (Exodus iii. 2), and the grant- 
ing to Abraham of a sign from God in the 
form of a smoking furnace, are likened to 
the trumpery performances of the so-called 
spirit control "John King," and scattered 
throughout the book other equally nonsensi- 
cal and profane comparisons, too numerous 
to mention. Text after text, too, is mutilated 
and contorted to suit the editor or author's 
purpose, but one would have credited him 
with rather more caution and astuteness than 
to give away his cause so abruptly and com- 
pletely as he does on page 88, where, after 
quoting Daniel v. 5 (which narrates the inci- 
dent of the writing on the wall) he goes on 
to say : 

"Many sitters will attest that hands frequently take 
hold of theirs, pat their face, and allow them to hold 
them. Scores of times I have held the materialized 
hands of spirits. They have taken from the pockets of 
those present sweets and placed them in my mouth. . . . 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 51 

A small musical box out of order has often by spirit 
hands been taken to pieces and set going, etc." 

Precisely, Mr. Lobb; it is just those vulgar 
and foolish antics you speak about that place 
the phenomena contrived by the present-day 
medium on an entirely different footing from 
that of the miracles performed by God's 
select, either in the Old or New Testament; 
and which makes one positively certain that 
if due to spirit agency, at all, that agency 
can only emanate from the lowest possible 
planes. 

It is hardly necessary to add, perhaps, 
that, after little gambols of this kind, Mr. 
Lobb and his friends should be visited by the 
spirits of all kinds of eminents. On page 
133, for instance, he says: 

"At the close of my services in London and the Prov- 
inces clairvoyants present often remain to let me know 
the number and names of spirits present on the plat- 
form and in the building. They name them one after 
another — C. H. Spurgeon, Hugh Price Hughes, W. E. 
Gladstone, Geo. Muller, etc."; 

whilst in other parts of the book references 
are made to the return of Mrs. Catherine 
Booth, Sir Edwin Arnold, Charles Dickens, 



52 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

John Wesley, John Bunyan, John Dryden, 
and, of course, William Shakespeare (no 
Spiritualistic seance is complete without 
either Shakespeare or Dickens, who would 
appear to have many "egos" and to be cap- 
able of much division, for they are often al- 
leged to be present in more circles than one 
at the same time). That there can be found 
people ready to believe that the spirits of 
such of our great departed as Shakespeare 
and Dickens should leave all the solemnities 
of the tomb to attend meetings and seances 
presided over by men of no greater mental 
capacity than John Lobb and other present- 
day Spiritualists, is almost inconceivable. 
It can, in fact, only be accounted for by one 
or other of the following assumptions : either 
that the people who swallow such absurdities 
are naturally weak-minded — were born so — 
or that constant attendance at such circles 
has brought about a mental degeneracy which 
is, very possibly, really due to spirit influence, 
the influence of that type of spirit most likely 
to respond to evocation on such occasions, 
namely, impersonating demons, or to use a 
Spiritualistic expression "elementals." 
My reference to Mr. Lobb and his work 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 53 

thus serves a dual purpose — it demonstrates 
the extent to which human vanity as well as 
human credulity can be carried, when in- 
fluenced by Spiritualism; and, sad to say, 
the air of extreme self-satisfaction and smug- 
ness so apparent in every page of the volume, 
is but characteristic of the generality of all 
so-called exponents of the cult. 

To continue. I have referred to two of 
the theories entertained by Spiritualists with 
regard to the fate of the spirit on leaving the 
material body, I now come to a third — that of 
reincarnation. 

In brief, reincarnation is a travesty of the 
sequence of cause and effect. According to 
its doctrine action, whether physical or men- 
tal, leaves its inevitable traces, and these 
traces, whatever the Bible may say to the 
contrary, cannot be wiped out in a moment. 
On them and them only rests our future — 
there can be no intervening agency. There 
is, in fact, no such thing as a sudden change 
of heart ; sudden conversion and the realiza- 
tion of forgiveness are only fancies; they 
have no existence apart from our imagina- 
tion ; and the highest planes of spiritual per- 
fection can only be obtained by a drastic sys- 



54 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

tern of purification which may last through- 
out centuries. "To-day thou shalt be with 
me in Paradise" is a delusion and a snare. 
Man, himself, must blot out his sins, and, in 
order to do this, he must keep on coming back 
to this physical world in a fresh body till he 
leads a life absolutely free from any vestige 
of vice. Even as man fashioned his present 
fate in the past, so he is fashioning his fu- 
ture fate in the immediate present — and what 
is done cannot be undone. It is a cold, com- 
fortless and really hopeless creed, for it 
would seem to be quite impossible to rid our- 
selves of all vice, especially if we regard 
vice — as we ought to do — as something more 
than the mere indulgence of our cravings for 
sexual intercourse or such acts as are punish- 
able by the law. Greed, selfishness, and 
scandal-mongering are all strictly speaking 
vices, and what man or woman is there, who, 
looking back upon his or her life, can honestly 
say that it is absolutely free from all three 
of them? Hence, it follows that although 
the world is, according to geologists, many 
millions of years old, no one alive now — or 
within living man's memory — is within 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 55 

measurable distance of getting to the highest 
spiritual planes. 

It will thus be seen that the principles of 
reincarnation are at total variance with the 
Atonement and the very fundamentals of 
Christ's teachings, so much so that one won- 
ders how Spiritualists embracing such prin- 
ciples can possibly call themselves Chris- 
tians. But there are many who do, many 
who, regarding our Lord as a mere spirit-in- 
spired man and medium, cite the following 
passages from the Gospels (notably St. John 
iii. 3-11, and St. Matthew xviii. 3) in sup- 
port of their theory that Christ Himself was 
an expounder of the doctrine of reincarna- 
tion. 

To ordinary and rational minds the mean- 
ing in these texts will appear quite simple 
and direct ; our Lord points out to Nicodemus 
and the disciples the necessity of becoming 
simple and trustful as children, in order to 
gain admittance to Heaven ; and it would be 
difficult to realize how any one could read an- 
other meaning in these texts, had one not 
learnt from a personal knowledge of Spirit- 
ualists that their imagination is only equaled 



56 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

by their astounding self-esteem. Believing, 
or pretending to believe, that the spirits of 
Shakespeare and Dryden attend seances 
given by comparative nonentities, and make 
tables and other articles jump about the 
room, Spiritualists stick at nothing, and we 
find them attributing to our Lord's sayings 
cabalistic secrets that were in total variance 
with His character, and which He would 
never even have conceived. 

Needless to say, our Lord's promise to the 
penitent thief on the Cross that he should 
be with Him that day in Paradise, rules out 
any right on the part of the Spiritualists to 
claim Christ as a reincarnationist. Indeed, 
there is not a tittle of evidence to show that 
the doctrine of reincarnation is in any way 
alluded to in the Scriptures ; and, in all prob- 
ability, it owes its foundation to nothing more 
substantial than sheer craving for novelty; 
anyhow, it is such an outrage on common 
sense, in its utter disregard of such impor- 
tant factors as heredity and the increase of 
population, that no one would dream of tak- 
ing it seriously, were it not unhappily true 
that there are a great many people — weak- 
kneed Christians of little sound judgment or 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 57 

logic — who are easily influenced by the shal- 
low, persuasive oratory characteristic of so 
many of the leading Spiritualists and Theoso- 
phists, and that the latter without scruple 
try to destroy faith in Christianity, which is 
by far the noblest and most consoling creed 
the world has ever known, and offer in its 
stead their fanciful and high-falutin' hotch- 
potch known as Spiritualism and Theosophy. 
It is, in fact, on behalf of these more gullible 
and unstable followers of Christ — no matter 
to what actual denomination they belong — 
that a crusade against Spiritualism and 
Theosophy is now so urgently needed. 

It is not the Cross that is in danger, it 
will never be in danger so long as the race 
embraces men and women possessing high 
ideals coupled with sound judgment and com- 
mon sense, but only this one section of so- 
ciety, and it is to save both their souls and 
bodies that this challenge to their Spiritual- 
istic seducers has gone forth. 



CHAPTER IV 

SPIRITUALISM AND THE CHURCHES 

Camouflaged, as the sinister attitude of 
Spiritualists is towards the Old and New 
Testaments, under apparent attempts to 
merely reconcile the tenets of Spiritualism 
with those of the Bible, there is no effort 
whatever made to disguise the malicious in- 
tentions of Spiritualists towards the 
Churches, which they never miss an oppor- 
tunity of attacking. No worse offender in 
this respect could be found than Dr. Peebles. 
After describing — in a pamphlet entitled 
"Christianity, Churchianity or Spiritualism ,, 
(p. 18) — a seance he attended, at which a cer- 
tain Mr. Withal made the remarkable but not 
very modest statement that he had come into 
psychic relations with "a very exalted' ' 
spirit who lived bodily at the same time as 
Jesus of Nazareth, and after expressing his 
admiration at the said Mr. Withal 's calm and 
dignified style (people who make such 

58 



THE CHURCHES 59 

astounding assertions as Mr. Withal need a 
little calmness to carry them through), Dr. 
Peebles proceeds — in a manner that shows he 
himself is wanting in that very quality he 
apparently admires so much in others, 
namely, dignity — to launch into a most violent 
unrestrained attack on the Churches. He be- 
gins by telling us that, under the Churchian- 
ity of Eoman Constantine and his bishops, 
etc., blood, due to persecution, began to flow 
"in crimson currents," and proceeds to 
comment on the "two millions" of human 
lives lost in the Crusades, the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew's Day, and the Edict of Feb- 
ruary 15th, 1568, whereby, he alleges, the 
Holy Office of Eomanism condemned all the 
inhabitants of The Netherlands to be put to 
death as heretics. It is not only the Catho- 
lics, however, who come in for his denuncia- 
tion, for on page 20 he says ", . . at later 
date John Calvin, Beza, and other sectarian 
bigots wrote books and pamphlets defending 
the right and lawfulness of religious perse- 
cutions," and (on same page) "John Knox 
of Scotland, appealing to the Word of God, 
declared that * Those guilty of idolatry and 
heresy should be put to death.' " Further 



60 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

on lie graciously allows that Eoman Catholics 
and Protestants, "alternating in power,' ' 
slaughter each other. 

After haranguing what he is pleased to 
term Churchianity in this rather crude and 
elementary fashion, apparently oblivious of 
the fact that butchery was by no means con- 
fined to Christian countries, but was going 
on — as it is periodically now, in spite of 
united Christian effort — all over the world, 
quite as much, if not more, among races who 
had no orthodox denominational creeds, as 
among those who had, Dr. Peebles blossoms 
out into verse. For example, on page 21, we 
find this couplet: 

"Praise God from Whom all blessings flow 
Three thousand Frenchmen sent below/'' 

which he informs us was sung in Berlin — 
presumably in 1870 — after a victory over the 
French by united bands of "Catholic and 
Protestant' ' citizens parading the streets. 
After the late Great War one cannot, of 
course, be surprised at anything Huns may 
have done, but one wonders whether in the 
ranks of those united bands of citizens Dr. 
Peebles refers to there may not have been a 



THE CHURCHES 61 

few German Spiritualists. How can he 
vouch for the fact that they consisted entirely 
of Catholics and Protestants? 

Dr. Peebles, however, allows his animus 
against the Churches to carry him from bad 
to worse, for after informing us that all the 
persecutions and bloody wars (I presume he 
would say the same of the late greatest of 
all wars) he has specified were the legitimate 
outcome of orthodox theology, he concludes 
with the scathing declaration that "The 
orthodox theology of salvation through blood, 
the blood of our ancient Jew, is still preached 
in our orthodox pulpits." 

In order, perhaps to preserve some 
semblance of artistic balance, the author, 
after such a thick laying on of blackness, 
thinks it necessary to afford us some relief, 
and, consequently, proceeds to discuss the 
merits of Spiritualism, which he valiantly en- 
deavors to show is superior in every way to 
" Churchianity. ' ' Crudely and unusually 
spiteful, however, as these attacks of Dr. 
Peebles on the Churches must seem to most 
impartial people, they are, as I have said, 
merely samples of the methods employed by 
many other Spiritualists. Mr. John Lobb in 



62 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

his " Talks with the Dead" tells us that the 
spirit of the late Eev. William Rogers, or 
"Hang Theology Rogers," as Mr. Lobb 
terms him (p. 113), comes back on purpose to 
let us all know that "Creeds and dogmas find 
no favor on the other side, ' ' whilst in a para- 
graph headed "The Christian Church To- 
day" the same author remarks, "The Chris- 
tian Church to-day fails to arrest the atten- 
tion or command the respect of the world to 
whom they preach: their words fall dead 
without the proof of works"; and a few lines 
further on, ' ' The power of the Spirit has for- 
saken the Church of to-day." These obser- 
vations not unnaturally lead one to inquire 
whether the author considers the power of 
the Spirit has forsaken the Churches for 
Spiritualism, and whether he honestly be- 
lieves the latter commands the respect of the 
world, because, if so, he could surely have 
afforded us better instances in support of his 
views than those of spirits returning to this 
earth merely for the purpose of playing such 
foolish tricks as putting sweets in peopled 
mouths, thumping on tables, and dropping 
fish from the ceiling. Such phenomena 
surely must refute the idea that the "Power 



THE CHURCHES 63 

of the Spirit ' 1 is to be found in Spiritualism, 
or that Spiritualism commands the respect 
of anything like so large a portion of hu- 
manity as the world. 

Indeed, all Mr. Lobb's intended biting 
criticism of the Churches could be responded 
to — were it worth while — with, perhaps, 
greater vigor and certainly far more truth. 

Mr. Leon Denis in "Christianity and 
Spiritualism" is condescending enough to 
admit (pp. 27-28) that the thoughts of Christ 
still live in the teachings of the Church, but 
that they are dished up in a very adulterated 
form, owing to the desire of such ecclesiastics 
as Popes, etc., "to fortify and render ab- 
solute the authority of the Church.' y 

To this, of course, the natural reply is — if 
the teachings of the Churches is, possibly, a 
combination of Divine tenets and accessories 
introduced by theologians, what about Spirit- 
ualism which is, unquestionably, a medley of 
Babylonian Paganism, diluted Chaldean and 
other kinds of necromancy, gnosticism, Eosi- 
crucianism, Buddhism, Theosophy, Unitar- 
ianism, and a dozen and one other isms, which 
help to make it a most unsavory and indi- 
gestible mess. Spiritualists should be re- 



64 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

minded very strongly that before throwing 
dirty water at other people, they should first 
look to their own house. After speaking thus 
sneeringly of Theologians, Mr. Leon Denis 
continues (p. 28) in this strain: 

"It is by the aid of the light of this new revelation, 
both scientific and philosophical, which has already 
spread throughout the whole world, under the name of 
modern Spiritualism, that we will seek to free the doc- 
trine of Jesus from the obscurity in which the work 
of centuries has enveloped it." 

Having thus excited our curiosity and raised 
our expectations mountains high to know 
how Spiritualism purposes to achieve a task, 
in which Mr. Denis delicately suggests the 
Churches have failed, he proceeds to let us 
down badly by stating that the method 
Spiritualism intends to employ is that of "an 
imposing train of experimental proofs," 
which will furthermore prove that Spirit- 
ualism and primitive Christianity are identi- 
cal. 

Now the experimental proofs which Mr. 
Leon Denis would use for this purpose must 
be the phenomena produced by such mediums 
as Eglington, H.P.B., Eusapia Palladino, 



THE CHURCHES 65 

and present-day birds of the same feather — 
there are no other — therefore it is obviously 
by these phenomena, proved to be fallacious, 
that the wonderful scientific and philosophic 
cult of Spiritualism seeks to eclipse the 
Church; to demonstrate, beyond the shadow 
of a doubt, that Christ was simply an ordi- 
nary medium, that the hidden meaning which 
they — and they only — attribute to His Gos- 
pels, are mere common or garden secrets of 
Spiritualism (secrets with which all the initi- 
ates of that creed are familiar), and that 
Spritualism and the earliest form of Chris- 
tianity — Christ's Christianity, as distinct 
from the Church's Christianity — are identi- 
cal. Unfortunately for Spiritualism, how- 
ever, despite the patronage of a few such em- 
inent scientists as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir 
W. F. Barrett, the late Sir William Crookes 
(this patronage, I suppose, accounts for the 
dubbing of the cult — scientific), the bubble of 
mediumship has been too mercilessly pricked 
for the common-sense man-in-the-street to 
place much confidence in what is left, and it 
will take something far more subtle and con- 
vincing than any of the spirit phenomena, or 
to give them their more appropriate name, 



66 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

"spirit stunts,' ' that we have lately seen to 
induce the main body of Churchmen to dis- 
card their old faith in a sanctified Christ and 
adopt the mere caricature of Divinity Spirit- 
ualists proffer in its stead. 

Spiritualists mockingly remark that the 
Church has failed, but do they honestly think 
that Spiritualism either has succeeded, or can 
succeed, in the future. Its phenomenal side 
— the side on which it so largely depends — is 
at the present moment more debatable than 
ever. Professional medium after medium 
has been exposed, and many of those who 
have escaped so far may not unreasonably 
be deemed to owe their present security to 
the West End patronage they have been lucky 
enough to secure. Still their turn may come, 
and further striking demonstrations of the 
hyper-credulity of certain of the most emi- 
nent scientists, to whose recommendation they 
owe so much, may, even yet, be forthcoming. 
Despite its boasts to the contrary, the 
foundations of Spiritualism are unstable in 
the extreme, and, in my opinion, a slight 
breeze — let alone a searching wind — would 
bring the whole fabric to the ground. 

To revert to its claims of success. We 



THE CHURCHES 67 

have seen, I think, that they cannot possibly 
be said to rest on its alleged spiritual phe- 
nomena; hence, I suppose, it is to the doc- 
trinal side of the cult that we must look for 
them. But what do we find here 1 Long dis- 
sertations on love and brotherhood. Spirit- 
ualism is declared to be a kind of free- 
masonry that knits together not only the 
hearts of men, but their souls, a freemasonry 
consisting of a much more poignant and dur- 
able bond of love than that advocated and 
practiced by other creeds. It is also de- 
clared to be a bond of love and brotherhood 
which is not confined to this material plane; 
on the contrary, in accordance with the prin- 
ciple of progress and evolution (evolution is 
apparently one of the fundamentals of the 
doctrine of Spiritualism), its practices are 
carried on in the spiritual world, where 
marriages are said to take place as they do 
on earth. 

In this connection it would be as well, per- 
haps, to remind Spiritualists that words 
only do not make character, any more than 
mere tenets, of necessity, lead to practice. 
It is doubtless very pleasant to be able to 
imagine oneself transported to the very 



68 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

highest spiritual planes — planes from which 
so many — perhaps all — of your friends are 
hopelessly barred; and extremely gratifying 
to be able to assure those who flock in hun- 
dreds to listen to your alleged psychic ex- 
ploits, that you have been to far-off realms 
and seen celestial visions, which are not for 
the rank and file, but reserved for the great- 
est and wisest of the initiates of Spiritual- 
ism only. Perhaps it is this mood that Mr. 
Leon Denis has in mind when he refers to 
the philosophic side of Spiritualism. But 
it is a mood hardly in keeping with that spirit 
of love and fraternity breathed out so often 
from Spiritualistic pulpits, and referred to 
so constantly in Spiritualistic pamphlets; 
and it is not altogether in harmony with the 
doctrine of humility preached in the Sermon 
on the Mount, which Spiritualists are so fond 
of holding up as a much-needed example to 
theologians and churchgoers. However, as 
it is undoubtedly the spirit blatantly observ- 
able in about ninety-nine per cent of Spirit- 
ualists, it makes one wonder if, after all, they 
are the big success they believe themselves to 
be. Surely the success of a creed is — or 
should be — gauged by the effect it has on 



THE CHURCHES 69 

moral character. Now I can call to mind no 
instance of Spiritualism having produced 
any particularly great moralist or philan- 
thropist. I have from time to time come 
across many people professing this creed, 
but so far, not one of them has exhibited 
any very lovable quality or any very special 
virtue. On the contrary, by far the major- 
ity of those Spiritualists with whom I have 
come in contact, have been indisputably 
egotistical, self-opinionated, arrogant, con- 
ceited, absolutely self-satisfied and extremely 
dogmatic. All the failings, in fact, that they 
so generously attribute to churchgoers they 
themselves possess — and possess in an al- 
most unlimited degree. Nor am I alone in 
this opinion. My verdict is only that of 
numbers of others — outsiders one may say 
(I, myself, am an undenominational Chris- 
tian), but then you must remember that it is 
the outsider who sees most of the game, and 
consequently it is the outsider who is best 
able to judge. Inasmuch then as Spiritual- 
ism cannot possibly be said to have an elevat- 
ing effect on character, and may very justly 
be said to have the reverse, I fail to see how 
it can be described as anything whatever in 



70 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

the nature of a success, unless it be a success 
for the Powers inimical to the genuine ad- 
vancement and moral welfare of the human 
race. 

On the other hand, the Churches are not al- 
together undeserving of criticism. The ac- 
cusation of narrow-mindedness and lack of 
sympathy that (Spiritualists and others have 
leveled against them is not wholly without 
substance. They — especially those that have 
temporarily wielded the most power — have 
been autocratic and dictatorial, paying too 
little heed to the great example set them by 
the gentle, Divine Being they have all made 
pretense of imitating. Assuredly the great- 
est worth of Christianity lies in the heed it 
bestows on spiritual and moral progress, and 
the greatest care should always be taken to 
see that candidates offering themselves for 
Holy Orders have the moral and spiritual 
progress of mankind at heart. Very ob- 
viously this has not always been the case, and 
incalculable harm has been inflicted on the 
cause of the Churches — of all Christian de- 
nominations — because in a matter like this 
the careless public does not differentiate — 
through men taking Holy Orders solely for 



THE CHURCHES 71 

the sake of bettering their social position; 
or — as so often happens — leading a slack life 
on a comparatively large stipend in some 
quiet country village ; where, in such counties 
as Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and 
Devon, hunting forms an additional attrac- 
tion. Hunting parsons are often jocularly 
referred to as good "sports," but the person 
who speaks thus lightly of a priest or min- 
ister, if he ever thinks at all, does not think 
of the welfare of the Christian Churches. It 
ill befits a pledged disciple of Jesus of 
Nazareth, who was the quintessence of all 
that was kindly and decorous, to be seen, in- 
spired by cruel motives, and often three- 
quarters drunk, careering madly on bareback 
across fields in pursuit of a small and defense- 
less animal. 

The Church of Christ is not for such men 
as these, their proper vocation in life is to 
serve behind the pot-house bar, or as a 
marker in a billiard saloon, where their 
coarse jest and often blasphemous jokes 
would fall on no shocked ears. 

Certainly the Churches need reforming, 
and no one knows this better than the priest- 
hood themselves, but the powers that be 



72 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

move slowly, and many years may elapse be- 
fore such a purging and purification, as alone 
can be of any real benefit to the cause of 
Christ, can be effected. Let us hope it will 
be sooner than I, for one, anticipate. On the 
other hand, if the Churches have seemed, at 
times, merely a cloak for black sheep, it is 
also equally true that they have been the gen- 
erating instrument of many of the greatest 
moralists and public benefactors the world 
has ever produced. With all their faults the 
Christian Churches have been proved to pos- 
sess many virtues ; and it has been shown that 
they have exercised a restraining and enno- 
bling influence on the masses, such as has 
certainly never been exercised by any other 
creed, and which neither Spiritualism nor 
Theosophy have ever given the slightest 
sign of emulating. 

We have now seen — in brief — the attitude 
of Spiritualism towards the Churches. Let 
us now review — also in brief — the attitude of 
the Churches towards Spiritualism. 

Whilst all the Churches are, perhaps, 
equally emphatic in their disapproval of 
Spiritualism as a whole, they differ some- 
what in their views regarding its various 



THE CHURCHES 73 

tenets. Most Protestants, for example, do 
not admit even the possibility of spirits of 
any kind, no matter whether of the dead or 
of those that have never been in the flesh, 
responding to the call of living beings and 
perpetrating the phenomena attributed to 
them. They declare — and I think with 
reason — that it is time enongh to talk of 
spirit influence being present at seances, 
when we have first of all eliminated all possi- 
bility of fraud and other natural— though, 
perhaps, at present unknown — physical 
causes. 

With regard to this same question, 
Catholics, on the other hand, do not commit 
themselves to any very decided statements. 
While admitting the possibility of the return 
of the dead under very rare occasions and 
with some very specific reason, as, for in- 
stance, in the case of Samuel and the witch 
of Endor, they do not consider it at all likely 
that the blessed dead would come back for 
the trivial purpose of manifesting at a 
seance. They believe that other spirits 
might respond to the invitation of mediums, 
but that all such spirits would be evil and of 
the same type as the demons in the Bible. 



74 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

They express, however, no definite judg- 
ment as to the nature of the phenomena, or 
whether they are produced through physical 
or super-physical agency, but both they and 
the Protestant Churches roundly condemn 
Spiritualism as being in total opposition to 
the Divine Will. The Roman Catholic 
Church of the two is, perhaps, the more in- 
clined to confine its condemnation of Spirit- 
ualism to theological grounds. It not un- 
naturally unites with all other denominations 
in desiring to protect its followers from 
fraud and charlatanism, which it considers 
may possibly take place at seances, but it 
views the matter more seriously from the 
religious standpoint. First of all, the Catho- 
lic Church regards any attempt whatever at 
communication with the spirit world, in 
other than the form of prayer set down in 
her liturgy and based on the precepts of the 
New Testament, as in direct opposition to the 
Divine "Will, and thinks it Her right to warn 
Her children strongly against such practices. 
She has a strong basis for her objections in 
certain passages in the Bible to which I have 
already referred. She is fully aware that 
Spiritualists triumphantly point to the fact 



THE CHURCHES 75 

that many of the saints had visions, but she 
wishes to emphasize the point that the 
visions of the saints came to them quite spon- 
taneously, i. e., without being sought, and, for 
that reason, cannot in any way be placed in 
the same category with the trances of the so- 
called mediums. 

The Churches, one and all of course, utterly 
condemn the attempts made by the Spirit- 
ualists to liken our Lord and His Apostles, 
as well as the chosen of God in the Old Testa- 
ment, to present-day mediums — their line of 
argument being, I believe, very much the 
same as that which I adopted when dealing 
with the question in a previous chapter. 

Furthermore, the Catholic Church, besides 
looking upon the mere holding of Spiritual- 
istic seances as quite contrary to Christ's 
teachings, also regards all such seances as 
a source of the utmost peril to those who par- 
take in them. She believes that both medi- 
ums and sitters, in courting intercourse with 
the other world, open a door to spiritual 
forces of a nature that is totally unknown to 
them, and which, in all probability, would be 
of an entirely evil origin ; but no matter from 
what source these forces emanate, inasmuch 



s 



76 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

as " evocation' ' is in direct opposition to 
Divine Will, the Catholic Church believes no 
response can be productive of any good, but 
may very easily lead to a degeneration of the 
morals and faith in Christianity of those 
who participate in the proceedings. 

Lastly, the teachings of the Catholic 
Church are utterly antagonistic to the idea 
of any spirit being so much at the mercy of 
a human being as to have to — for that is 
what it practically amounts to — repeatedly 
respond to their beck and call. 

These, I think, are the main objections 
from the religious standpoint that the Catho- 
lic Church entertains towards Spiritualism. 
There are others, I believe, of a purely theo- 
logical nature, but, rather too technical to 
be dealt with here. Most of them, including 
those I have already touched upon, seem to 
be logical and moderate, and will, I think, 
find favor with many who, like myself, are 
merely undenominational Christians. 

Indeed, the Churches on the whole would 
seem to have acted with great restraint and 
to have shown surprisingly little animus 
against a body of people (i. e., the Spiritual- 
ists) who have been doing their best to un- 



THE CHURCHES 77 

dermine faith in the Divine nature of the 
Gospels, and to thin the ranks of all denom- 
inational congregations. 

It may not be without interest to quote 
the opinions of a variety of Church writers 
on the subject, picked from men of all denom- 
inations, and selected chiefly on account of 
their outspokenness, the majority of such 
writers being more or less guarded and re- 
served. 

In a pamphlet called " Spiritualism' ' that 
appears in a work entitled "Lectures on the 
History of Religions," Vol. V. (published 
by the Catholic Truth Society), the Rev. 
R. H. Benson says: "Spiritualism, or Necro- 
mancy, or the dealing with ' familiar ' spirits, 
has always been regarded by the other great 
world religions as a bastard, rather than a 
competitor with a dignity comparable with 
their own." And in another place in the 
same work he remarks, "For every man that 
is converted by Spiritualism to believe in the 
immortality of his soul, there are probably 
a hundred who are led by it to relinquish the 
beliefs and practices of Christianity. ' ' And 
in still a third place, "So far as Spiritualism 
has produced a coherent creed at all, it 



78 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

directly traverses even such fundamental 
doctrines as that of the Incarnation. ' ' It 
takes little deduction from these lines to 
arrive at the inevitable conclusion that the 
late Monsignor Benson was wholly opposed 
to Spiritualism. 

Equally emphatic is the Bev. Winfrid 0. 
Burrows, M.A., Vicar of Holy Trinity, 
Leeds, who in a pamphlet entitled "The 
Churchman's Attitude towards the Spirit- 
ualists" (published by the Society for 
Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1900) says: 
"The Christian who believes in our Lord, 
and uses his Bible as his guide, will feel that 
he cannot neglect the Church of Christ for 
Spiritualist Meetings"; and again: "The 
strange freaks of the Spiritualists seem, with 
rare exceptions, to have no moral meaning, 
and to be mere marvels intended to rouse 
curiosity and attract attention. Such dis- 
plays as these our Lord always refused to 
work." And still again— "It (Spiritualism) 
has no message of hope. It contains no word 
about repentance or conversion, regeneration, 
or renewal. It leaves the victim of carnal 
passions without hope, except after 'ashes 
of remorse.' " Quoting from a letter he re- 



THE CHURCHES 79 

ceived from the Eev. J. E. Illingworth, Mr. 
Burrows writes: "It is called Spiritualism, 
but it is in fact materialism — an attempt to 
return to what St. Paul calls carnal, and 
keeps us back, if anything, from securing 
true union with our blessed dead, by really 
spiritual means, viz., complete life in God." 
Written rather long ago, but still fully ap- 
plicable to these times, for neither Spirit- 
ualism nor the Churches' attitude towards 
it have changed to any very appreciable ex- 
tent, is a pamphlet called "Spiritualism. 
Tested by Scripture,' ' written by the Eev. 
A. E. Fausset, M.A., in 1885, and published 
by the Church of England Book Society. 
In it the author says: "Since Spiritualism 
opposes many of the fundamental doctrines 
of the written Word of God, it cannot be 
from God"; and further on, "It is contrary 
to all probability that holy angels would 
stoop from Heaven to such low, trivial and 
even blasphemous manifestations, or that 
saved souls with Christ should come for such 
calls; or the lost be allowed to leave their 
prison to gratify man's forbidden curiosity.' ' 
And, after quoting Ecclesiastes ix. 6, in 
support of such views, he continues — 



80 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

"The spirit manifestations can only emanate 
from the Prince of the powers of the air, 
the spirit which ruleth in the children of dis- 
obedience." On another page he remarks, 
"Simultaneously, the doctrine of evolution 
and the science of comparative religion are 
undermining the exclusive authority of the 
Bible, as the only infallible revelation from 
God." Elsewhere in the same work (p. 15) 
we read: "Consulters of the dead are sorcer- 
ers," and "sorcery and necromancy are 
among the foretold signs of the last days," 
1 Timothy iv. 1; and again (p. 13), "Spirit- 
ualism accords with the old Babylonian 
pagan doctrine of seven spheres." 

The same author gives the following ex- 
tract from a letter sent him by a minister of 
the Presbyterian Church in Auckland, New 
Zealand. "Manifestations have often been 
counterfeited," the minister says, "from 
mercenary and other unworthy motives, but 
there are real manifestations," and he 
goes on to state, "I have abandoned the 
practice of holding intercourse with these un- 
known agencies, which I have been led to con- 
clude are demoniacal. Besides the unreli- 
ability of the communications, I have found 



THE CHURCHES 81 

them sometimes shockingly blasphemous and 
vulgar in the extreme. Spiritualism has ex- 
cited a painful effect on even ministers known 
to me," and Mr. Fausset goes on to explain 
that in numerous cases the result of Spirit- 
ualistic dealings has been insanity. 

Nor is the above case the only one I can 
quote of ministers who have dabbled in 
Spiritualism finally awaking to the fact that 
it is really very dangerous. The Brooklyn 
Eagle some years ago contained a report of 
a lecture delivered by the Eev. W. H. Clagett, 
President of the Board of Trustees of the 
Texas Presbyterian University, in the Asso- 
ciation Hall of Brooklyn, N. Y. Dr. Clagett 
was once a Spiritualist, but the following 
extracts from his speech will show to what 
an extent his opinions on the subject changed, 
and what a revulsion of feeling he experi- 
enced in connection with it. 

"I was a firm believer in it (Spiritual- 
ism)," he says, "for years, often acting as a 
medium in private seances. There is a 
deeper interest in this question than many 
Christians think. Spiritualism is one of the 
greatest powers for evil in the world." 
And again — "I believe there is such a thing 



82 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

as communication between men and spirits. 
Satan, in the form of Spiritualism, offers to 
bring the loved one back again so that we can 
hear his voice and actually see his face. . . . 
By attacking the soul in this subtle and 
plausible manner it is not strange that Satan 
in the form of Spiritualism leads many 
astray.' ' But though Dr. Clagett expresses 
his belief in the possibility of spirits — evil 
spirits — being present at seances, he also be- 
lieves in the extreme probability of fraud. 
"To think,' ' he observes, "of a wife or 
mother, even if she could communicate with 
us on earth, going to a woman whom she 
never knew and with whom she would not 
have associated if she had, and telling her the 
most sacred things — the idea is degrading 
and a dishonor. Spiritualism is a fraud, 
two-thirds of it being devil at second-hand, 
and the rest of it devil at first hand. ' ' These 
remarks of Dr. Clagett should, I think, ap- 
peal to all lovers of common sense. I, for 
one, am quite certain that neither my mother 
nor father, who have both passed over, no 
matter how fond of me, would ever dream 
of trying to deliver a message to me through 
the medium of a professional Spiritualist 



THE CHURCHES 83 

and in the presence of complete strangers, 
even though these strangers were eminent 
members of the Psychical Research Society, 
out, as they profess to be, solely in the inter- 
est of science. No, if it were possible to com- 
municate at all, I am quite sure they would 
communicate direct, and not through the 
agency of any other living person, least of 
all one with whom they would have had abso- 
lutely nothing in common when alive. The 
plea that it is only so-called mediums who 
possess the psychic faculties requisite for 
such communications is undoubtedly open to 
question, for it is quite certain that spirits 
that manifest themselves spontaneously, 
often do so to people having no claim what- 
ever to these alleged special properties, and 
I am inclined — after many years ' experience, 
too — to agree with Dr. Clagett that Spirit- 
ualism is a fraud, the bulk of the so-called 
phenomena being merely due to trickery on 
the part of mediums, and the rest either 
to some subtler, comparatively unknown 
natural causes, or to a spirit agency entirely 
different from that which it usually purports 
to be. The fact that the messages or visions 
are sometimes of an apparently celestial na- 



84 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

ture is no proof whatever that their origin — 
supposing they really do come from the spirit 
world — is Divine. The fairest flower to look 
at not infrequently contains the deadliest 
poison, and drugs that smell and taste the 
sweetest are often the most injurious to the 
system. That which is the most harmful to 
man can assume any guise. 

In a book entitled "The Powers of the 
Air," the author, who was once a medium, 
declares he once came under the control of 
a spirit which professed to be the Almighty 
and actually hoodwinked him into believing 
that he — the medium — was specially ordained 
to redeem the world. To use the author's 
own language : ' ' The spirit then went on to 
say, 'I have chosen you to be my second 
Christ; I have appointed Jesus, my son, to 
instruct you and make you wise in all things 
— to do my will in the great work of man's 
salvation.' " The author, so he relates, con- 
tinued obeying the devil's instructions, firmly 
believing in the Divinity it professed, until 
foretold events so frequently turned out in 
direct opposition to prophecy, and he met 
with such constant failure and disappoint- 



THE CHURCHES 85 

ment, that his suspicions were aroused and 
he finally came to the conclusion that this 
spirit, far from being what it purported to 
be, was something very evil. He then 
struggled hard against it, and eventually — 
though not without desperate efforts — for 
when once you really attract spirit influence, 
it is extremely reluctant to leave you — com- 
pletely banished it. Before it took its final 
departure, however, the author extracted 
from it a very remarkable confession which 
he narrates in detail. Here, for example, 
are some of the questions he put to it and its 
replies : 

Question: "Are not the doctrines taught 
generally by Spiritualists denominated in the 
Scripture the doctrine of devils or demons 1 ' ' 

Answer: "Yes, they are, in very deed, the 
doctrines of devils or demons, because they 
generally reject the teachings of Jesus Christ 
and His Apostles and followers." 

Question: "How do the inhabitants of 
your world mostly spend their time?" 

Answer: "We spend the time, mostly, 
since the discovery of the mediumistic com- 



86 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

munications, in developing mediums, in 
making psychological experiments with them 
and in communicating through them." 

Question: "Do you not think that good 
spirits develop mediums, and communicate 
through them as well as yourselves?" 

Answer: "I think not: we think we are 
warranted in the conclusion that no pious 
dead, nor the spirits of great men made per- 
fect, nor angels, have anything to do with 
controlling mediums at the present day. ' ' 

Further questions put to it elicited the in- 
formation that evil spirits "have the power 
to produce lifelike images in the minds of 
impressible mediums," which are often mis- 
interpreted by the latter into being actual 
sights of real objects — or, in other words, 
the controlling spirit influence makes the 
medium mistake the purely subjective for the 
objective, a mistake which, in my opinion, 
almost invaribly occurs. 

The author goes on to explain from the in- 
formation afforded him by his conquered 
"control" that spirits, when once invited, 
"have the power of using the human body, 
with all its organs and faculties," and can, 



THE CHURCHES 87 

in addition, and with the assistance of 
countless other spirits, move the weightiest 
of tables and chairs. The author further- 
more tells us that he received practical dem- 
onstrations from his " ex-control ' ' and some 
of its associate spirits of their power to 
imitate voices, and thus trick people into be- 
lieving they were actually conversing with 
departed friends and relatives; and he sums 
up all his experiences with this type of 
seance and controlling spirit thus: "They 
delight in evil as their object, and especially 
that branch of evil called deception. If any 
one thing pleases them more than any other, 
it is to make those in the earth life believe 
the most monstrous and absurd theories.' ' 

The International Bible Students' Associ- 
ation, which has important branches in 
Brooklyn, London, Melbourne, and many 
other large cities, published a very bitter and 
vindictive little booklet against Spiritual- 
ism in 1897. It is entitled "Spiritism — 
Proofs that it is Demonish" — and may be 
said to represent the views of many 
thousands of orthodox Christians on Spirit- 
ualism and such kindred subjects as Theos- 
ophy and Christian Science, some twenty 



88 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

years ago. In this work (p. 81) we find the 
following extracts from a somewhat interest- 
ing article by the Rev. A. B. Simpson: "The 
healing of diseases is also said to follow the 
practices of Spiritualism and Animal Magnet- 
ism, Clairvoyancy, etc. We will not deny 
that while some of the manifestations of 
Spiritualism are undoubted frauds, there are 
many that are unquestionably supernatural, 
and are produced by forces for which physical 
science has no explanation. It is no use to 
try to meet this terrific monster of Spiritual- 
ism, in which, as Joseph Cook says, is, per- 
haps, the great 'if y of our immediate future 
in England and America, with the hasty and 
shallow denial of the facts, or their explana- 
tion as tricks of legerdemain. They are 
often undoubtedly real and superhuman. 
They are the revived forces of the Egyptian 
magicians, the Grecian oracles, the Roman 
haruspices, the Indian medicine men." 

I have already alluded to the fact that 
many Spiritualists constantly refer to God 
as the Spirit of Love, and never seem to tire 
of emphasizing the fact that we should all 
dwell together like brothers and sisters, and 
love one another. The love they thus fre- 



THE CHURCHES 89 

quently advocate, however, is not the love 
advocated in the Bible, but rather the kind of 
love the Bible strongly condemns. It is the 
love that recognizes no confines or restric- 
tions; that is purely unconventional and 
takes into no account marriage laws, or the 
ban society has so rightly placed on un- 
natural friendship. It is free lance, an- 
archical love that, if once permitted and en- 
couraged, would soon lead to utter social 
chaos, and eventually to the hopeless, whole- 
sale destruction of the race. And there are 
grave signs in England to-day that this kind 
of love is on the increase and is no longer 
solely confined to one sex. Indeed, I have 
reason to believe there are clubs and res- 
taurants in London at the present time, whose 
membership and clientele is solely confined to 
women, who meet there as lovers rather than 
friends. These women all profess to be men- 
haters and certainly never miss an opportu- 
nity of abusing men and doing everything they 
possibly can to damage their reputation and 
chances in life. Wives are set against and 
estranged from their husbands, sisters 
poisoned against their brothers, and I even 
know instances of mothers having been won 



90 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

over and set against their sons. The 
weapons generally employed are the usual 
gags of the advocates of women's suffrage, 
i.e., the unfairness of the marriage laws and 
of paying men better than women for the 
same amount of work done, and the many al- 
leged privileges enjoyed by men that are de- 
nied to women; to which are added various 
other grievances, some, no doubt, more or 
less real, and others wholly imaginary, but 
all, nevertheless, very highly colored. This 
anti-men campaign was most conspicuous 
during the Parliamentary Election of the 
winter of 1919, and is being pushed most em- 
phatically all over England at the present 
moment. Though, no doubt, it owes its 
origin to some extent, at least, to jealousy and 
unsatisfied cravings for motherhood, as well 
as to other more or less natural causes, it also 
receives much inspiration and obtains con- 
siderable impetus from Spiritualism and 
Spiritualism's kindred cults — Theosophy 
and Christian Science. 

It is a fact that cannot be got away from 
that a not inconsiderable percentage of 
women Spiritualists, Theosophists and 
Christian Scientists are pronounced anti- 



THE CHURCHES 91 

menites. "We were told," a lady Spiritual- 
ist observed to me some months ago, "at a 
seance held in our club, not to have anything 
to do with men, that men are all beasts and 
tyrants, and that we must oppose them in 
every possible way, and try and oust them 
from all their present positions of power and 
prominence. We were further told that 
man's love is a very poor thing compared 
with woman's, and that women should only 
select friends and confidants from among 
their own sex. ' ' The lady went on to inform 
me that the same spirit "control" had as- 
sured both her and her clubmates that the 
Creator was a woman and not a male, as one 
had always been led to suppose from the 
Scriptures, and that the Divine feminine 
mind, which controlled everything, was 
strongly opposed to the male sex, which it 
regarded as the source of all the wrongs for 
which mankind in general had suffered. Now 
one would be inclined to regard all this 
lightly were it but an isolated example, but 
unfortunately it is not. This same doc- 
trine of the omnipotence of the female 
element in the super-physical world and of its 
unqualified antipathy to the male sex finds 



92 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

many women supporters, who are firm in 
their conviction that it emanates from bond 
fide spiritual sources and, consequently, re- 
gard it with a certain veneration. 

Women mediums — who are, in my opinion, 
not infrequently bribed — are constantly pro- 
fessing to receive messages confirming it, 
and it is propagated not only throughout the 
length and breadth of England, but in Amer- 
ica and even India. At present the damage 
it is doing is mainly confined to the home-life, 
where it separates husband from wife and 
splits up the family circle, and, of course, to 
established religion, to which its tenets are 
wholly opposed. It will soon, however, work 
far wider havoc; the population question, 
especially of the upper and middle classes, 
will be seriously affected by it, and it may 
actually lead to a sex war involving the whole- 
sale and final destruction of the British, as 
well as other races. As I have already sug- 
gested, the doctrine of free-love, in a specific 
sex sense, is to no small degree closely affili- 
ated with this doctrine of women's right to 
predominate, and of man's iniquities. 

Let us now see what the Bible Students' 
Association has to say with regard to Free 



THE CHURCHES 93 

Love in their booklet. Turning to page 38, 
we find: "The strongly marked tendency of 
Spiritism towards free-love-ism served to 
bring it into general disrepute among the 
pure-minded, who concluded that, if the in- 
fluence of the dead was properly represented 
in some living advocates of Spiritism, then 
the social conditions beyond the vale of death 
must be much worse, much more impure, than 
they are in the present life, instead of much 
better, as these demon spirits claim. It 
denies the Atonement and the Lordship of 
Christ, while it claims that He was a spirit 
medium of low degree; and, furthermore, 
abundant testimony could be quoted from 
prominent Spiritists proving that the tend- 
encies of Spiritism are extremely demoraliz- 
ing." 

With this idea of the free-love evil obvi- 
ously still in mind the author of this same 
pamphlet goes on to quote the testimony of 
Mr. J. F. Whitney, Editor of the Pathfinder 
(N.Y.) and once an advocate of Spiritualism. 
"Now after a long and constant watchful- 
ness/ 9 he writes (p. 29), "seeing for months 
and years its progress and its practical work- 
ings upon its devotees, its believers and its 



94 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

mediums, we are compelled to speak our 
honest conviction, which is that the manifes- 
tations coming through the acknowledged 
mediums, who are designated as rapping, tip- 
ping, writing and entrance mediums, have a 
baneful influence upon believers, and create 
discord and confusion ; that the generality of 
these teachings inculcate false ideas, approve 
of selfish individual acts, and endorse theories 
and principles which, when carried out, de- 
base and make man little better than the 
brute. Seeing, as we have, ' ? this writer adds, 
"the gradual progress it makes with its be- 
lievers, particularly its mediums, from lives 
of morality to those of sensuality and im- 
morality, gradually and cautiously under- 
mining the foundation of good principles, we 
look back with amazement to the radical 
change which a few months will bring about 
in individuals ; for its tendency is to approve 
and endorse each individual act and charac- 
ter, however good or bad these acts may be." 
The bad influence of the mediums to which Mr. 
Whitney refers is, without the shadow of a 
doubt, chiefly relegated in the channels to 
which I have referred ; and in the same pam- 
phlet we read: "So bold and outspokenly 



THE CHURCHES 95 

immoral did some of the prominent represen- 
tatives of Spiritism become, especially the fe- 
male mediums (and most of its mediums are 
female) that the moral sense of civilization 
was shocked." Also an instance is given 
(see p. 41) of a woman who was induced by 
Spiritualism to enter into such unnatural ex- 
cesses that the very thought of them event- 
ually drove her mad and she had to be con- 
fined in an asylum. "A gentleman who had 
occasionally attended on preaching, ' ' he says, 
" asked that an interview be granted his sis- 
ter whom he would bring from Cleveland for 
the purpose. She was, he said, laboring un- 
der the delusion that she had committed the 
unpardonable sin and he hoped we could dis- 
abuse her mind of the thought which some- 
times made her wild. We consented, and she 
came. She told us how she had met in Cali- 
fornia a man who had a familiar spirit and 
occult powers. At first disbelieving, she aft- 
erwards became his co-worker in ' mysteries ' 
resembling witchcraft, and had finally in- 
veigled and injured a 'dear female friend.' 
Since then remorse had seized her, and she 
had been tortured and at times frenzied, and 
hope had forever fled." The end, as I have 



96 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

said, was lunacy, and I have no doubt what- 
ever there are dozens of similar cases in our 
asylums to-day. I think a thorough analysis 
of Chelsea and the West End might prove the 
truth of this assertion, but the result of such 
an analysis cannot be made public, since 
Spiritualism has now become a fashion, and 
whenever an attempt is made to clean out a 
quagmire containing names of any special 
political or social note, it is instantly quashed. 

I have, however, no desire to enter more 
deeply into this question of "free love with- 
out men'' in this volume. It is sufficient for 
me to hint that it exists in far greater force 
than the average person thinks, that it finds 
its recruits almost solely among the ranks of 
the more bitter adherents of the cause of 
women's rights, and that Spiritualism, by 
aiding and abetting it, is helping to bring 
about what will — unless soon checked — prove 
to be the biggest calamity that has ever be- 
fallen the world — far bigger, even, than the 
late Great War. 

As I think I have now produced sufficient 
evidence to show how strongly not only one 
but all orthodox Christian denominations 
are opposed to Spiritualism and everything 



THE CHURCHES 97 

that is akin to it, I will conclude with a few 
very brief extracts from the long correspon- 
dence on the subject in the Sunday Times of 
1917. In the issue of that paper for 16th 
September, Mr. Alfred Bruce Douglas 
writes: 

"As a Catholic I am forbidden to take part in a 
Spiritual seance under pain of mortal sin, nor have I 
the least temptation to do so. But before I became a 
Catholic I occasionally dabbled in Spiritualism, and my 
own experiences were quite enough to convince me that 
the phenomena are sometimes perfectly genuine and per- 
fectly unaccountable except on a supernatural basis. 
. . . The phenomena of Spiritualism are, the Church 
teaches, produced by devils and evil spirits. Their ob- 
ject is to betray and deceive the human race. Con- 
tinued indulgence in Spiritualism leads to madness, 
folly and despair, and loss of real faith." 

Again, in a letter to the same paper, pub- 
lished 2nd September, 1917, Mr. Samuel 
George says: 

"I began as a would-be believer in Spiritualism. I 
am now an unbeliever because I know both sides. . . . 
The psychists complain about the bad doctrines of the 
Churches and despise those who adopt them. They 
justify their own existence as psychists as a result of 
this defect, yet at the same time provide for mental con- 
sumption worse doctrines than the Churches teach." 



98 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

And, lastly, in a letter published in the 
same paper on 23rd September, 1917, M. J. 
L. Bissley, a member of the Church of Eng- 
land and a Catholic, says : 

"Spiritualism is a culture which it is folly to deny, 
but a greater one to cultivate. It has never yet saved 
a soul; it has ruined many, as it is meant to do." 

The words of this gentleman are tanta- 
mount to saying Spiritualism is a vice. He 
is correct. Spiritualism is a vice, a vice that 
begets countless other vices, and as such it 
should be stamped out, and stamped out 
quickly. 



CHAPTEB V 

THE PHENOMENAL SIDE OF SPIRITUALISM AND 
ITS EFFECT ON THE HEALTH 

I have now come to what may, perhaps, be 
more correctly termed the phenomenal side 
of Spiritualism, though it is, as I have said 
before, so closely interwoven with the doc- 
trinal branch that it is almost impossible to 
disassociate the one from the other. 

At most Spiritualistic gatherings, where 
anything in the nature of doctrine is 
preached, phenomena of some description or 
other are also called into requisition. 

If one wishes for a practical demonstration 
of the effect of Spiritualism on health, one 
need not go far afield ; one has only to attend 
a Spiritualistic meeting, or seance, or even 
partake of afternoon tea at any Spiritualistic 
club, and one sees abundant evidence of it. 
The devotees of Spiritualism are almost uni- 
versally people of the same type — men and 
women — mostly the latter — with pale, rest- 

99 



100 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

less eyes and ill-balanced faces. Here and 
there one sees a massive and seemingly well- 
proportioned head, but there is usually some 
tell-tale characteristic — either a wild, far- 
away look in the eyes, or an expression of 
childish credulity and simplicity spread over 
the whole countenance, but particularly no- 
ticeable in the mouth. 

Most Spiritualists are elderly, and not a 
few in their dotage, for Spiritualism is a 
cult that, saving in the case of the abnormal, 
and weak-minded, rarely appeals to youth. 
I think, too, one would not be far wrong in 
saying that no small percentage of its de- 
votees are epileptics. Here and there, it is 
true, at a Spiritualistic gathering, one comes 
across more or less normal types, but these, 
it will be found, are generally either strangers 
who have gone there out of mere curiosity; 
or women who are there to make use of other 
women, either for political or merely vicious 
purposes, sometimes for both ; or harpies, in 
the now fashionable guise of professional 
psychics, and these you can generally tell by 
the watchful expression in their hard, mean 
eyes, their smug smiles, and their general air 
of shrewd observation and furtiveness. 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 101 

The people in this assembly whose whole 
appearance and atmosphere strike you as be- 
ing furthest removed from the spirit of the 
real Christ and His saints, are, in all prob- 
ability, those self-designated, professional 
psychists, who proclaim that they are conver- 
sant with denizens of the highest spiritual 
planes; and as for the rest — the neurotics 
and anaemics, who drink in so eagerly every 
word of the grandiloquent clap-trap that falls 
from the lips of the lecturers or speakers, and 
who watch so greedily for any kind of psy- 
chical phenomena however trivial and ab- 
surd — one has only to exchange a few words 
with them to perceive how thoroughly un- 
stable and unbalanced their minds have be- 
come. They attribute everything — even the 
most trifling details of their daily lives — to 
spirit influence, and see, in the most natural 
and commonplace happenings, the work of 
some mysterious visitor from the super-phys- 
ical world. 

I know of one old gentleman, for example, 
a confirmed Spiritualist, who never puts on 
his hat, or eats a crumb of bread without ask- 
ing permission of his spirit guide, and a cor- 
respondent wrote to me from Birmingham 



102 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

to the effect that he had been suffering lately 
from excessive constipation through a band 
of spirits (whom he named individually) 
never permitting him to take any remedy or 
obtain relief. 

There is also amongst my acquaintances 
a confirmed Spiritualist and Theosophist in 
London, who can never converse with you for 
long without saying: "It must be so, because 
the White Order have testified to it." The 
White Order, I learned on inquiry, is the 
source of certain revelations made period- 
ically to the old gentleman by a notorious 
medium, who declares that he frequently 
visits the angels in the highest celestial 
spheres and is by them initiated into the fu- 
ture happenings on this earth. 

Spiritualism acts on some people like a 
drug — it intoxicates them. The more they 
taste of it, the more they want, until they 
eventually arrive at such a pitch that they 
feel they cannot possibly do without it. They 
are either always being told something by 
spirit voices, or automatic writing, or raps; 
or else they are continually fancying they 
see angels (the angel craze has very much 
increased since the war, and it no doubt re- 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 103 

oeived an additional impetus from the 
episode known as "The Angel of Mons"). 

Of course, it is the excitement of the 
seance that produces this intoxication. The 
type of neurotic I have specified has always, 
perhaps, craved for excitement and sensation 
(both are recognized symptoms of his 
malady), and he finds these cravings best pro- 
vided for in the menu of the Spiritualists. 
He goes to a seance where he sits in semi- 
darkness, momentarily expecting something 
to happen, and this state of chronic expect- 
ancy is like nectar to him. When he gets 
home he tries a little table-turning or crystal- 
gazing in his bedroom, and then, after a fitful 
night's sleep, in which his dreams are well 
garnished with visions of angels, spirits of 
the dead, creaking tables and flying tam- 
bourines, he awakens, all hurry for the day 
to pass quickly and for it to be time again for 
him to attend another seance. In the end he 
becomes a constant attendant at such proceed- 
ings and clings to them for just as long as his 
fast-decaying mentality will permit him. 
The kind of excitement one gets at seance is, 
moreover, not only bad for the mind, but it 
affects other organs as well; from the con- 



104 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

stant straining of the ears to catch the sound 
of creakings, taps and spirit voices, those or- 
gans gradually become impaired, whilst the 
sight suffers equally through the strain of try- 
ing to make out spirit forms and ordinary ma- 
terial objects in the whole or semi-darkness. 

Excitement, too, of any sort, is bad for the 
heart, and the constant thrills one gets upon 
hearing even the most usual noises — for 
darkness apparently intensifies sound — can 
only have the most weakening and injurious 
effect — an effect that might very well be fatal 
in the case of any one suffering from actual 
heart disease. Besides, unnatural excite- 
ment of this description often encourages, if 
it does not actually produce, either locomotor 
ataxia or cerebral paralysis. 

Also, I have heard that the excitement oc- 
casioned by seeing a table suddenly rise and 
tilt has brought on fits — apoplectic as well as 
epileptic. 

But one of the commonest results of con- 
tinually going to seances, and constantly con- 
sulting so-called professional psychists — no 
matter what their modus operandi, or 
whether their alleged spirit communications 
be celestial or otherwise — is insanity. I 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 105 

myself have come across many people who 
have succumbed to the craze for attending 
seances, and have eventually gone mad. 

One case, for instance, was recorded in the 
daily papers not so very long ago, and will, 
I dare say, be recalled by those who happen 
to have read it. 

A young lady, well known in society, was 
induced to become a Spiritualist through the 
prospects held out to her of being able to 
penetrate into the deepest mysteries — or, in 
Spiritualistic parlance, get initiated into the 
innermost secrets concerning another life. 
She consulted mediums and attended seances, 
and, in the end, fancied she heard spirit 
voices continually telling her to join her 
friends and affinity on the other side. At last, 
unable to bear the strain of hearing these in- 
cessant voices any longer, she went to stay in 
the country, and, in the gray hours of the 
morning, the time when she had been led to be- 
lieve her spirit friends were appealing most 
strongly for her advent amongst them, she 
committed suicide. 

Another case of a victim who was well 
known to me — at least by repute — is that of 
a man, the son of a Northamptonshire vicar, 



106 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

who was intimately acquainted with certain 
of my oldest friends. Falling under the 
spell of Spiritualism he, too, soon became 
convinced that spirit voices, which he had 
first heard at seances, followed him every- 
where, and kept on appealing to him to take 
the plunge and see what it was like behind the 
veil. Consequently, one evening, when he 
was having supper with my friends, he sud- 
denly sprang up, and, declaring that he could 
hear the voices whispering in his ears and 
telling him he was wanted — wanted badly — 
he hastened out of the room, into the dark- 
ness of the night. The following morning he 
was found on the railway line — run over, and 
there is little doubt that, obeying the injunc- 
tions of the real or imaginary spirit voices, 
he had placed himself there for that purpose. 
Anyhow, a verdict of suicide whilst in a state 
of unsound mind was returned. 

I can also quote, from personal knowledge, 
a third case, i.e., that of a retired army officer 
who, from continually attending table-tilting 
seances presided over by professional medi- 
ums, took to hearing rappings in his own 
house. They came to him at all hours, but 
most frequently in the night, until he was sel- 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 107 

dom free from them, and, consequently, had 
a very severe nervous breakdown. However, 
acting on his doctor's advice, he gave up 
Spiritualism, and was eventually restored to 
health. 

From these examples I conclude that no 
person who has made a habit of continually 
attending seances for any length of time can 
hope to escape from all the ill effects to 
which they have thereby subjected their mind 
and body, and if they do not in the end be- 
come absolutely demented, they certainly de- 
generate and become very far from either 
sound or normal. Hitherto, whenever this 
question of Spiritualism causing insanity has 
been dealt with, it has at once been suggested 
that, in all probability, those Spiritualists 
who have gone mad would have done so in 
any case — that is to say, they would have 
gone mad, had they never heard of a seance 
or seen a medium. Very possibly, but, on 
the other hand, there is no doubt whatever 
that Spiritualism has precipitated their in- 
sanity; and if the spirits that demonstrate 
themselves at seances and private sittings 
come from the high and celestial planes they 
profess to come from, how is it that they 



108 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

have such an injurious effect on the mind? 
If they really are angels, or the spirits of 
good people, would they not invariably exer- 
cise a soothing and healing effect on the 
brain, instead of irritating and inflaming it? 

No, Spiritualists cannot get away from the 
fact that, despite all their boasted intimacy 
— which generally amounts to revolting 
familiarity — with angels and spirits of the 
dead — entities which, when of flesh and blood, 
possessed quite out of the ordinary intelli- 
gence and moral qualities, and were only too 
anxious to do anything that would benefit 
mankind — no information that has in the 
slightest degree aided medical research has 
been obtained. 

Furthermore, Spiritualism can point to no 
really authenticated case of malignant disease 
being cured through mediumship, or to any 
one who could be pronounced by a quite im- 
partial medical man to be the better in health 
for his constant attendance at seances, and 
his habit of imbibing Spiritualistic literature. 
It seems to me to make little material differ- 
ence to my argument that Spiritualism in- 
duces insanity, whether the people that have 
become insane through attending seances 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 109 

were naturally weak-minded or not. In 
either case the spirit influence at seances is 
thus proved to be the reverse of beneficial, 
and any attempt to camouflage these spirits 
under the guise of angels or equally well-dis- 
posed super-physical entities is useless. It 
will be argued, of course, that the enrollment 
of such men as Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir 
Arthur Conan Doyle in the ranks of Spirit- 
ualists must, at any rate, modify my destruc- 
tive criticism. I do not think so. On the 
contrary, I rather think it strengthens it. 

Both Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir A. C. Doyle 
are geniuses in their legitimate callings, and 
with regard to genius I cannot do better than 
suggest that the reader should refer to an 
article by Mr. James Sully, author of "The 
Human Mind" and " Illusions,' ' that ap- 
peared in The Nineteenth Century, June, 
1885. The following extracts from it may, 
however, serve to illustrate my purpose : 

(1) "Genius must be looked upon as the most signal 
and impressive manifestation of that tendency of Na- 
ture to variation and individuation in her organic forma- 
tions which modern science is compelled to retain among 
its unexplained facts." 

(2) "Our conclusion is that the possession of genius 



110 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

carries with it special liabilities to the action of the 
disintegrating forces which environ us all. It involves 
a state of delicate equipoise, of unstable equilibrium, 
in the psycho-physical organization. Paradoxical as it 
may seem, one may venture to affirm that great original 
power of mind is incompatible with nice adjustment 
to surroundings, and so with perfect well-being." 

From these two quotations I think there 
can be little doubt that in the author 's opinion 
geniuses are always more or less abnormals, 
and, being such, have a natural fascination 
for abnormal subjects. Hence, it is not at 
all strange to find both Sir Oliver Lodge and 
Sir A. C. Doyle have become infatuated with 
Spiritualism. 

But to revert to the injurious effect Spirit- 
ualism has on health. I think I cannot do 
better in support of this theory than to quote 
the views and opinions of certain people — 
chiefly medicals — who are specially qualified 
to speak on the subject. 

I will, then, refer first of all to John M. 
Maccormac, M.D., L.R.C.P., and S.Ed., Phy- 
sician to the Victoria Hospital for diseases 
of the nervous system, Belfast, who, in a 
work entitled " Abnormal Ideas and Nervous 
Super-excitability" (published by William 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 111 

Mullan & Song, Belfast, 1899) says on page 
19 : " The next point for our consideration is 
that which relates to the troubles of the ner- 
vous system which arise from or are asso- 
ciated with the teaching of mysticism." On 
page 20 he gives the following definition of 
mysticism: "The common character of the 
chief aspects of mysticism is an immense 
longing for happiness, coupled with a pro- 
found contempt for sensuous things. Ee- 
garding the joys of this world as ever-chang- 
ing and inseparable from pain, the mystic 
seeks to realize at once the joys of an eternal 
bliss,' ' and this definition will be seen to ap- 
ply very accurately to a large class of Spirit- 
ualists at all events, who, scorning the attrac- 
tions offered by the inhabitants and scenery 
of this world, seek to obtain immediate en- 
trance to, or intercourse with, the so-called 
highest spiritual planes through the instru- 
mentality of a medium or personal experi- 
ments with crystals, etc. 

Dr. Maccormac goes on to define the two 
classes into which he divides mystics, the 
one — that of the people who "despise the 
body with all its wondrous organisms and 
capabilities, that they may seek to attain to 



112 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

a mysterious union with or absorption into 
some divine essence,' ' and the other, those 
who " yield themselves to a certain elevation 
of the spirit, supposed to be the outcome of 
some direct spiritual manifestation. ' ' In 
both cases, as he points out, the results of 
such beliefs and practices are equally in- 
jurious to the nervous system. 

Dr. Maccormac's booklet is quite short, 
only thirty-one pages, but it would be well 
worth the while of any one who is contemplat- 
ing taking up spiritualism to read it, before 
embarking on such an extremely perilous un- 
dertaking. 

In another work, entitled " Types of In- 
sanity: an Illustrated Guide in the Physical 
Diagnosis of Mental Disease,' ' by Allan Mc- 
Lane Hamilton, M.D., one of the consulting 
physicians to the Insane Asylums of New 
York City, and the Hudson Eiver State Hos- 
pital for the Insane, etc. (published by Wil- 
liam Wood '&■ Co., New York, 1883), the au- 
thor describes many interesting cases of in- 
sane people who labor under the delusion 
they hear and see things, or in other words 
are perpetually clairaudient and clairvoyant. 

For example, opposite Plate V. and under 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 113 

the heading of "Subacute Mania,' ' we have 
"E. E., aged twenty-eight, duration of in- 
sanity six years, auditory hallucinations. 
She has communications with divine person- 
ages and delusions of grandeur." ('Com- 
pare this with the claims made by certain 
Spiritualists to hear angels ' voices and to be 
on talking terms with the spirits of such 
eminents as Milton, Shakespeare, Charles 
Dickens, etc.) 

Again, opposite Plate III. and under head- 
ing of "Melancholia Attonita," we have "C. 
C, aged thirty-seven, auditory hallucinations. 
She hears voices commanding her not to eat." 
(Compare with certain of the alleged spirit 
commands of a similar nature, to which I 
have already referred.) Again, opposite 
Plate VII. and under heading of ' ' Dementia, ' ' 
we read "A. W., aged forty-four. She has 
had visual hallucinations, and has heard 
voices which told her to destroy herself. ' ' 
(Compare with some of the cases of suicide 
I have quoted as coming within my own cog- 
nizance.) The author does not say any of 
the trio were Spiritualists or lost their rea- 
son through attending seances, but it is a 
significant fact that the hallucinations of 



114 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

which they were the victims tally exactly with 
certain of the phenomena Spiritualists claim 
as hailing from the spirit world. 

That my remarks are based on a very 
solid foundation will, I think, appear per- 
fectly evident when I quote the views of 
Thomas Massie, M.B., as expressed in a let- 
ter published by the Sunday Times, 9th Sep- 
tember, 1917. After stating that for twenty 
years he has been engaged in the task of ' ' in- 
vestigating the mental condition of some two 
thousand lave hundred alleged lunatics," he 
goes on to say that from such people he has 
heard many statements assuring him of the 
presence of spirit forms, such as were de- 
scribed by a lady, styling herself ' ' an investi- 
gator of Spiritualism, ' ' and claiming to pos- 
sess the powers both of clairvoyance and 
clairaudience, in the Sunday Times for 2nd 
September, 1917. "I have never had," he 
continues, "any hesitation in certifying such 
persons as fit for asylum treatment. Neither 
the Superintendent of the Asylums nor the 
Commissioners on Lunacy have ever ques- 
tioned my certificates, and in my experience 
the justices have never had any hesitation in 
signing reception orders for such persons." 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 115 

Dr. Massie received substantial corrobora- 
tion of what he wrote in a letter published 
in the Sunday Times on 30th September, 
1917, in which the correspondent, Mr. G. 
Stuart Ogilvie, said: "Mr. Massie deals 
with the evidence very effectively, and as a 
county magistrate with over a quarter of a 
century's experience in certifying patients 
for our public lunatic asylums, I can endorse 
the truth of every word this professional 
gentleman writes." He goes on to remark 
further on in the same letter, "The basic 
facts remain that Spiritualism is as old as 
humanity, and that credulity is the converse 
of faith. The effect upon the weak-minded 
and the neuropathetic — especially in times of 
great mental and physical strain — has in- 
variably been the same in all periods. The 
cult revives, impostors flourish, insanity in- 
creases, and the sum-total of the national 
will-power is, pro tanto, decreased." 

Still another medical opinion taken from 
the same source. In a letter published in the 
Sunday Times on 4th November, 1917, L. A. 
Weatherby, M.D., wrote: "Can Sir Oliver 
Lodge or any one who declares that conversa- 
tions have taken place between the dead and 



116 MENACE OE SPIRITUALISM 

themselves inform me of a single instance in 
which any real and important communica- 
tions have been made % . . . Has, in fact, any 
single instance of some important informa- 
tion ever been made from that other world!" 
And continuing, he observes, "Have these be- 
lievers in Spiritualistic manifestations ever 
visited institutions for the insane, and 
watched those afflicted with hallucinations of 
hearing and sight, heard their remarkable 
conversation with these unseen speakers, and 
noticed the effect some of these insane sense 
deceptions have given rise to?" 

I will now quote from a work entitled 
"On Unsoundness of Mind in its Legal and 
Medical Considerations, ' ' written by J. W. 
Hume Williams, of the Middle Temple, Bar- 
rister- at-Law (published in 1890 by William 
Clowes & Sons, Fleet Street, London). On 
page 56, for example, the author observes — 
"A phase of mental disturbance, as evinced 
in public credulity, has within the last thirty 
years become more particularly developed. 
6 Spiritualism ' has had crowds of converts; 
professors of its art and mystery thriving on 
the ignorant susceptibilities of the multitude, 
to the great disquiet of weak-minded be- 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 117 

lievers in the supernatural. The action and 
reaction of psychic force evoking nervous 
sympathies in excitable temperaments, has, 
in many, produced hysterical cataleptic re- 
sults, appreciable by the physician, but to the 
uninformed full of mystery." 

The hysterical condition thus brought 
about is then, according to Mr. Hume, the true 
explanation of the majority, at least, of so- 
called Spiritualistic trances. Far from be- 
ing under the control of any exterior spirit 
force the trance medium is merely the victim 
of abnormal condition of the mind, a condi- 
tion into which she has unconsciously worked 
herself. 

This type of mediumship is, in fact, wholly 
self -induced, wholly dependent on a supreme 
straining and irritation of the entire nervous 
system, which results in a temporary com- 
plete suspension of the locomotor faculties. 
I refer, of course, only to the mediumship in 
connection with which there is no deliberate 
fraud on the part of the medium, who, when 
honest, no doubt does think she is handing 
over her body to the control of some attend- 
ing spirit. Mr. Hume obviously agrees with 
me that the generality of people attracted by 



118 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Spiritualism are either abnormal or weak- 
minded, or that they eventually become so, 
onee having adopted that cult. 

A point that is made much of by Spirit- 
ualists in dealing with this question of trance 
mediumship is that of the alleged talking in 
strange voices and unknown tongues. "It's 
all very well," they exclaim, "for Mr. Hume 
to try to explain trances by declaring them to 
be the result of hysterical catalepsy ; but how 
could he or any one else possibly account for 
a trance in which the subject suddenly begins 
to talk in a very different voice from his 
natural voice, and often in a language that 
we are certain is unknown to him when he 
is not under control? How can you explain 
this, saving by some outside spirit influence V y 
Well, I believe there is the possibility of ob- 
session, i.e., of some contaminating spirit in- 
fluence getting temporary control over peo- 
ple and utilizing them for evil purposes. I 
think that such a phenomenon might happen, 
but that it is very exceptional, simply because 
I do not believe present-day mediums are in 
possession of such secrets as were, in all prob- 
ability, known to the necromancers and 
witches of olden times. I believe most of 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 119 

the so-called spirit trances of to-day are 
either wholly fakes, or else can be explained 
by some such natural causes as Mr. Hume 
suggests. It must be remembered that most 
of the people who visit mediums are not alto- 
gether normal or well-balanced (because, as 
I have already said, mysticism has peculiar 
attractions for such people), and that they 
go to seances with minds so prejudiced in 
favor of believing, and anxious to believe, 
that it has only to be suggested to them that 
the voices they hear are those of their dead 
friends, when they will at once fall in with 
the idea and actually identify the voices. 
Some one suggests, too, that the medium is 
speaking in some foreign tongue — a tongue 
that is declared to be quite unknown to the 
medium when the latter is not under control 
(though no one is in a position to vouch for 
the truth of this but the medium herself), and 
those present will at once concur and declare 
the language to be Arabic, Chinese, or what 
not, there being no one at hand sufficiently 
expert (or bold enough) to refute their state- 
ment. It also happens sometimes, I believe, 
that the medium, having worked herself into 
a cataleptic condition, is quite silent, but is 



120 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

by those present declared still to be speaking. 
Indeed, there is no limit to the part sugges- 
tion and imagination play on such occasions, 
as any one who has been present at a table- 
turning seance and heard the very slight 
creaks at once exaggerated into "loud raps" 
will know. 

In a book I have before me,, and which is 
entitled "Text Book on Mental Diseases," 1 
the author, Theodore H. Kellog, A.M., M.D., 
late medical superintendent of Willard State 
Hospital and former physican-in-chief of 
New York City Asylum for the Insane, writes 
at great length on hallucinations, both audi- 
tory and visual, and although he does not 
actually allude to them in connection with 
Spiritualism, I cannot help remarking upon 
the very great similarity between the phenom- 
ena he attributes to patients, suffering from 
mental aberration, and the phenomena 
claimed by Spiritualists. 

Let me quote a few extracts from his work 
by way of illustration. On page 154 we find 
these lines: 

"Auditory hallucinations may simulate the voices of 
i Published in London, 1897, by J. and A. Churchill, 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 121 

friends of strangers, and they may speak in foreign 
tongues, and may also issue from animate and inanimate 
things, and represent every conceivable sound known to 
the patient, or even new strange combinations of 
sounds"; 

and such observations will appear all the 
more significant, if one recalls the many oc- 
casions upon which Spiritualists at a seance 
declare they hear voices, and the voices are 
heard by no one else. In the case of spon- 
taneous spirit appearances in haunted houses, 
I believe the phenomena, whether auditory or 
visual, are frequently witnessed by a number 
of people assembled together (though, in 
some cases, it is true, they are witnessed only 
by individuals separately) ; whereas the phe- 
nomena alleged to be seen or heard at seances 
are usually experienced only by the medium, 
or, at the most, by one or two of the sitters, 
and those who see the same phenomenon sel- 
dom give the same description of it. Many 
times I have heard, at a seance, one person 
declare that he heard rappings, or spirit 
voices, or that he saw blue lights, when no 
one else could hear or see anything ; and, on 
remonstrating, I have been told that I was 
not psychic. This has amused me vastly, 



122 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

since I have had more corroborated experi- 
ences with spontaneous phenomena in houses 
well known to be haunted than most people. 

But to continue. Let us see what Dr. Kel- 
log has to say with regard to suggestion, 
which, as I have stated, figures so largely at 
all seances. 

"Sensitive hallucinatory patients," he observes, "are 
influenced by their reading and by conversation, and it 
is possible in this way to have hallucinations by direct 
suggestion." 

Now it is direct suggestion, I believe — 
when there is no actual fraud — that certain 
people are persuaded at seances that they 
see and hear phenomena. The medium pro- 
fesses to see some luminous figure (or figures, 
for she usually sees dozens of them) hover- 
ing behind some one 's chair, and immediately 
one or other of the sitters cries out that they 
see a flame, or a hand, or an ethereal some- 
thing. At the same time they exhibit none 
of the terror one would naturally expect 
them to experience, were they really con- 
fronted by a genuine phantasm. 

Let us now revert to what Dr. Kellog has 
to say further on the subject of visual hal- 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 123 

lucinations, and apply his remarks to such 
phenomena as those Spiritualists who call 
themselves clairvoyants claim to experience 
at Spiritualistic meetings in alleged trances 
and in crystals. 

"Visual hallucinations," he states, "may have definite 
or indefinite proportions; they may seem as on a flat 
surface or solid and rounded; they may have changing 
or fixed outlines, and advance or recede, or move across 
the field of vision ; they may be colorless or have various 
prismatic tints; they may be larger or smaller than life; 
they may be single or multiple; and they may even be 
of panoramic character." 

In short, they may cover an immense range, 
and embrace every kind of object or scene 
that Spiritualists declare are purely spiritual. 
Those suffering from medically attested hal- 
lucinations are just as emphatically sure that 
they actually see the celestial visions they 
think they see, as are Spiritualists, the only 
difference being that the latter superciliously 
claim their visions to be the result of the so- 
called psychic faculty, whereas the latter — 
the certified lunatics — do not claim anything 
of the kind, but regard them naturally, with- 
out any conceit or affection whatsoever. Dr. 
Kellog's remarks are singularly applicable 



124 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

to the spirit faces, stated to be seen at seances 
where materialization is alleged to take place, 
though it must be borne in mind that these 
faces have not infrequently been proved to 
be a fake on the part of the medium or an 
accomplice. 

"The mask-like hallucination, ' ' Dr. Kellog 
says (p. 157), "is very real and leads pa- 
tients to believe that their acquaintances 
change their features frequently. ' ' How 
often have trance mediums been declared to 
have had their countenances suddenly meta- 
morphosed into the faces of those whose mes- 
sages they profess to deliver. 

Let us go on to see what further Dr. Kel- 
log has to say with regard to the same sub- 
ject. On page 157 we read, "Visual halluci- 
nations are common in the acute stages of 
mental disorder, and in general paresis, and 
they are more frequent during the vital re- 
duction of the night season than in the day- 
time. ' ' 

It will be noticed that most seances are held 
in the dark, and that darkness is declared by 
Spiritualists — particularly mediums — to be 
essential for spirit materialization (this, by 
the way, is not at all the case with spontane- 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 125 

ons ghostly phenomena in haunted houses, 
which can manifest themselves at all times). 
Darkness, according to Dr. Kellog and other 
medical experts, also specially favors visual 
hallucination, so that I think we can safely as- 
sume that many of the so-called spirit phenom- 
ena declared to be seen at seances are, in 
reality, nothing more nor less than visual hal- 
lucinations experienced by people with some 
rapidly developing mental or physical de- 
fect. For instance, Dr. Kellog informs us 
(p. 157) that visual hallucinations are not 
uncommon in eye diseases. Might it not, 
therefore, be perfectly feasible that a certain 
percentage of those people who see these so- 
called spirit manifestations, to order, have 
some peculiar optical deficiency or disease, 
such as is frequently to be met with in peo- 
ple who are quite out of the normal — and 
it is these abnormal persons, I repeat, whom 
Spiritualism particularly attracts and caters 
for. Another form of visual hallucination, 
this brain specialist tells us (p. 157), is "the 
aura of the epileptic." Epileptics see auras, 
so do other people who claim to be clairvoy- 
ants — no one else does. Now as I have pre- 
viously remarked — a statement that I fancy 



126 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

there would be little difficulty in corroborat- 
ing — people attending seances have not in- 
frequently been seized with epileptic fits, so 
that the excitement of anticipating phenom- 
ena either generated epilepsy, or else the 
victims had been subject to the seizures pre- 
viously; in either case, there can be no ques- 
tion that the effect of attendance at such ex- 
hibitions was very injurious, which would 
hardly be the case if the spirits alleged to be 
present were good ones. 

One more reference to Dr. Kellog, and then 
I will pass on to some other authority. On 
page 173 (I quote from the same work), he 
says, "Hysterical and hypochondriacal pa- 
tients indulge in fantastic reveries, and 
paranoiacs have a sort of a dream-life for 
months together, and the outcome in chronic 
mania is a steady play of fantasy, and the 
senile dement reverts to childish action of 
fantasy." Let us compare this with the 
statements of psychics, who tell us that they 
have often visited the highest spiritual planes 
and wandered through lovely, sunny mea- 
dows in company with angels, and that they 
have been shown panoramic views of such 
dazzling beauty and radiance as no mortal 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 127 

eyes ever looked upon before. Such vaunt- 
ings are very common, and are usually found 
to emanate from the older ranks of Spiritual- 
ists — people almost, if not quite, in their dot- 
age, We may, therefore, put two and two 
together. 

Another work I have at hand is one by 
Bernard Hart, M.D. (London), entitled 
"The Psychology of Insanity/ ' and pub- 
lished by the Cambridge University Press, 
1912. 

In this work Dr. Hart makes some very 
interesting remarks on the subject of auto- 
matic writing, to which many Spiritualists 
— especially those who are also members of 
the Psychical Eesearch Society — attach so 
much importance. 

Now I am quite ready to believe that cer- 
tain of the communications one does receive 
in writing of this description are due to spirit 
agency, but I think when that happens the 
writing comes to us more or less spontane- 
ously; I do not consider it at all probable 
that it can be forced, or made to respond to 
the invitation of people who are out purely 
for sordid motives, as is the case with pro- 
fessional mediums. I think that when one 



128 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

sits constantly and forces the mind into that 
state of blank Spiritualists deem necessary 
in order to obtain results, one renders oneself 
liable to at least two very serions dangers. 
First of all, there is the off-chance of some 
genuine inhabitant of a very undesirable 
spirit world coming along and obtaining an 
influence over us, that would certainly not be 
to our moral advantage ; and, secondly, there 
is the extreme probability of our minds 
gradually becoming weaker, and our whole 
health suffering in consequence. 

To such of us who are in full possession 
of our mental and bodily vigor such constant 
practices would be distinctly injurious, but 
to those of us who are naturally of rather 
weak intellect, hysterical, or in any way ab- 
normal, the gravest results might readily en- 
sue. Let us now see what Dr. Hart has to 
say on this subject. 

In "The Psychology of Insanity'' (p. 43), 
we find, "Let us take for example the phe- 
nomenon of automatic writing. This curious 
condition, although occasionally exhibited by 
comparatively normal people, attains its most 
perfect development in the form of mental 
disorder known as hysteria." Dr. Hart goQs 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 129 

on to say that "if we engage an hysterical 
patient in conversation, and while his mind 
is apparently wholly occupied talking to us, 
slip a pencil into his hand, he will, if some 
third person begins to whisper questions in his 
ear, write answers to them, being at the same 
time totally ignorant of what his hand is do- 
ing, and of the events he is describing. " Oc- 
casionally, Dr. Hart says, these events nar- 
rate past episodes in the patient's life, 
which he has long forgotten. Here, then, 
is surely a quite feasible explanation for peo- 
ple suddenly developing some alleged new 
faculty, such as drawing, painting, or playing 
on the piano under assumed spirit control. 
A suggestion has been made, possibly in con- 
versation or in some sound (some one has 
sung a certain air, or played a certain strain), 
or possibly the suggestion may have been con- 
veyed in a peculiar scent, or in some atmos- 
pheric condition; at all events, it has come, 
and the recipient's memory is at once 
awakened ; maybe they are taken back years, 
and a faculty long allowed to lie dormant is 
suddenly resuscitated. Such an occurrence 
would be all the more likely if the subject 
were addicted to hysteria. Dr. Hart thinks 



130 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

this a positive explanation for automatic 
writing, at least, for on the next page (of the 
same work) he remarks : 

"Automatic writing has played a large part in the 
history of Spiritualism, and has been attributed by sup- 
porters of that doctrine to the activity of some spirit- 
ual being who avails himself of the patient's hand in 
order to manifest to the world his desires and opinions. 
There is no need, however, to resort to fantastic hypothe- 
ses of this type, and the explanation of the phenomenon 
is comparatively simple." 

He then proceeds to give a very detailed 
but lucid description of the mental process 
which brings about the phenomenon, and it 
is thus perfectly well accounted for on nat- 
ural grounds. Before quitting this subject 
of hysteria, I should like to draw attention to 
certain statements which appear in a work 
(p. 538-9) entitled "Nervous and Mental 
Diseases,' ' by Archibald Church, M.D., and 
Frederick Peterson, M.D. (published in Lon- 
don, 1899, by the Eebman Publishing Co., 
Ltd.). They are: "It (hysteria) was often 
at the bottom of the demoniacal l possessions ' 
of the Middle Ages, and furnished some of 
the martyrs of witchcraft and religious 
fanaticism.". . . "The studies of Charcot 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 131 

and his students have placed hysteria upon 
a firm clinical basis, and enabled nearly all 
its manifestations to be traced to disturb- 
ances in the psychic sphere or in its sub- 
strata," — and referring again to hysteria 
"Heredity plays an important part." 

These statements merely confirm what I 
have already suggested, namely, that a cer- 
tain proportion, at least, of trance medium- 
ship and cases in which the medium actually 
speaks (either making use of some tongue 
declared by those present to be unknown to 
her, when in possession of her customary 
faculties, or when she adopts a voice at once 
assumed to come from another world) can be 
accounted for by hysteria, a theory that will 
be seen to be still further strengthened by 
the fact that so-called mediumship is often 
said to run in families. 

Another work from which I should like to 
quote is that entitled, "Spiritism and In- 
sanity," by Dr. Marcel Viollet, Physician to 
the Lunatic Asylums, Paris (published, 1910, 
by Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London). 

"Spontaneous somnambulism," Dr. Viol- 
let writes (p. 11), "is particularly easily 
brought on with certain neuropathic pa- 



132 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

tients. Because of this these persons fill an 
important role in Spiritistic drawing-rooms 
where hypnotism is practiced., They be- 
come subjects in the hands of the mediums, 
realizing experiments analogous to those of 
extra-lucid somnambulists; or they reveal 
themselves spontaneously as writing, or 
speaking, or table-telling mediums. ' ' In this 
statement Dr. Viollet bears out my theory 
that hypnotism plays a far more subtle and 
important role in seances than is generally 
imagined. I am quite of the opinion that a 
very fair percentage of the phenomena 
credited to mediums are, in reality, due to 
hypnotism, to the fancies of neuropathic peo- 
ple who are experimented upon by mediums 
possessing the power to hypnotize. Dr. 
Viollet continuing, says, "The predisposition 
to neuropathic accidents, commonly called 
' hysteria/ manifests itself during the 
seance, and the organizers of Spiritistic 
seances know well these attacks, so much do 
they fear them. ' ' ( See ' t La Survie, ' ' by Mme. 
Noeggerath, Librarie Spirite, 42 Rue St. 
Jacques, Paris.) And again, "Further, 
these neuropathic persons have a particular 
character made up of a certain instability in 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 133 

thoughts, opinions, projects, the itch of lying, 
and the desire, sometimes conscious but more 
often unconscious, of drawing attention to 
themselves.' • "In addition to these rather 
aggressive and militant neuropathies we have 
at seances/ ' so Dr. Viollet informs us, "the 
'paranoiacs' rarely consenting to drop their 
incognito which their pride considers a pedes- 
tal and their susceptibility a shield"; also 
"the feeble, armed with implicit faith, fol- 
lowing the movement like sheep ever ready 
to follow their leader," and again we read 
(p. 12-13), "hidden in the shadows, sit the 
sad, the timid, the scrupulous, motionless and 
dumb, with morbid melancholia at their el- 
bows, or crouching behind them, ever ready 
to pounce upon them. . . . Here they are, 
these predisposed, over whom dark-browed 
insanity has cast its tentacle; they are here 
in the rooms of Spiritism — come here to in- 
toxicate themselves with mystery as with a 
poison. ' ' 

These views are quite in keeping with the 
impressions I myself have received at 
seances and other Spiritualistic meetings, 
and, though not flattering, they appear to be, 
at all events, honest. Eef erring to the same 



134* MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

performances, Dr. Viollet says, ' ' Some bring 
their progressive insanity, others their senile 
intellectual decay. (N.B. — I have said that 
Spiritualism usually attracts the old, seldom 
the young.) The Spiritistic idea takes quick 
root in this sickly soil, where delirium is 
crouching low, delirium which will be swayed 
by Spiritistic pre-occupations. " He be- 
comes even less guarded as he goes on, and 
speaks with a candor, which, though some- 
what unconventional, is quite excusable in a 
foreigner, as foreigners, particularly French- 
men, do not see the necessity of being delicate 
when referring to glaring evils. "Others," 
Dr. Viollet observes, still referring to the 
habitues of seances, "intoxicated by various 
causes, alcohol, morphine, hashish, cocaine, 
ether, will, through their favorite poison, 
have their attack of delirium, but as they are 
convinced Spiritists, their ravings will take 
their color from Spiritism, theywill be hunted 
down and persecuted by the imaginary dis- 
incarnated. ' ' 

From these extracts one can, I think, form 
a fairly correct idea of Dr. Viollet *s opinions 
with regard to seances. I can only add that 
should any one still lack the conviction that 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 135 

Dr. Viollet has sufficient grounds for these 
opinions, his doubts would be immediately 
dispelled were he to read Dr. Viollet 's book. 
I have now, with one exception, exhausted 
the quotations I intended making use of for 
the purpose of illustrating "The Dangers of 
Spiritualism" from the health point of view, 
but I think enough has been said to make it 
evident to all but the extremely partial and 
prejudiced, firstly, that Spiritualism, with 
all it comprehends, namely, continually sit- 
ting in the dark or semi-dark, in a state of 
nervous tension, and straining the sight, 
hearing, and heart almost to bursting-point 
— constantly trying to force on an unnatural 
condition of trance — peering for hours at a 
time into a crystal, and always fancying one 
is hearing spirit sounds or seeing spiritual 
phenomena — is not only injurious to the 
health of the strongest, but absolutely fatal 
to the health of that class of people it 
especially caters for, and invariably en- 
tangles in its meshes, i.e., the abnormal, 
epileptic, hysterical, and weak-minded; and, 
secondly, that the majority, at all events, of 
the phenomena Spiritualists declare to be due 
to super-physical agency can be shown by 



136 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

medical men to be due chiefly to hysteria, and 
epilepsy, as well as to other physical and 
mental diseases of a similar nature. 

The following quotation I have held over 
until now, as it makes, I think, a fitting con- 
clusion to this chapter. It is taken from the 
oft-times referred to Eeport of Dr. G. M. 
Robertson, Superintendent of the Royal 
Asylum of Morningside, Edinburgh. 

"I feel it necessary at this time, as the result of several 
eases that have come under my care, to utter a note of 
warning to those who are seeking consolation in their 
sorrows by practical experiments in the domain of 
Spiritualism. ... I would remind inquirers into the 
subject that if they would meet those who are hear- 
ing messages from spirits every hour of the day, who 
are seeing forms, angelic and human, surrounding them, 
that are invisible to ordinary persons, and who are re- 
ceiving other manifestations of an equally occult nature, 
they only require to go to a mental hospital to find 
them. ... I desire to warn those who may possibly 
inherit a latent tending to nervous disorders to have 
nothing to do with practical inquiries of a Spiritualistic 
nature, lest they should awaken this dormant proclivity 
to hallucinations within their brains." 



CHAPTEE VI 

THE DANGER OF FRAUD OF ALL KINDS AT SEANCES 

I now come to another danger which faces 
those who adopt the cnlt of Spiritualism and 
take up seances at every turn, and that is the 
danger of being tricked. I believe that for 
one medium who does at times conscien- 
tiously endeavor to get in touch with bond 
fide spirits of the dead, there are ninety-nine 
who never make such an attempt, but wholly 
rely on their powers of deception, in order to 
rake in the shekels, which is the goal of all 
mediumship. I will deal with the table-tilt- 
ing medium first. Now I am neither a con- 
juror nor a scientist, so that I must regard 
the question purely from the view-point of 
the looker-on, the person possessed with the 
average amount, perhaps, of observation and 
common sense. To begin with, I have been 
to innumerable seances, some of them con- 
ducted by mediums, who have lately acquired 
considerable notoriety through the " back- 
ing' '. of several eminent professors of phy- 

137 



138 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

sics, and I have never yet been convinced that 
anything that has taken place when any of 
these scientific psychics have been present 
has in any way been due to bond fide spirit 
intervention. It is so easy to make a table, 
of the weight and dimensions of those usually 
used on such occasions, tilt. Try it for your- 
self, and you will find that a very little down- 
ward pressure with the tips of your fingers 
will cause the side opposite you to rise. I 
have frequently watched the fingers, arms, 
and mouth (the mouth is a very sure indica- 
tor) of mediums when they have been at the 
table, and I have often seen unmistakable 
signs there of pressure being used, a pressure 
which can, as a rule, be exerted with impu- 
nity, since mediums generally prefer to hold 
their seances in the dark, pretending that 
such a condition is very helpful, if not ac- 
tually essential to spirit communication. 
Neither they nor their patrons, the Spiritual- 
istic chemists, however, can explain why it is 
that spirits, when they materialize spontane- 
ously in haunted localities, do so very fre- 
quently in broad daylight. The legs of 
mediums should be watched, too, for I have 
heard of instances, when so-called spirit 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 139 

knocks have been produced by very material 
toes and knees. Tapping can very easily be 
manipulated by pressing on the table in such 
a manner that it gives little creaking noises 
that the medium knows well will at once be 
exaggerated by some of the sitters into taps 
or raps. As for the table running round 
the room, there is no doubt whatever that 
w r hen the medium, or, perhaps, an accomplice, 
has once given an impetus to the table, cer- 
tain of the sitters become so excited that they 
unconsciously assist in the movement, their 
exertions passing unoticed in the general 
hubbub and excitement. I believe it is some- 
times claimed that tables have occasionally 
risen right off the ground, but I have never 
been present at such an occasion; all the 
same, I have seen equally apparently inex- 
plicable feats accomplished by professional 
conjurors, and believe that Mr. Nevil Maske- 
lyne, or any other expert who is well versed 
in the theory of magic, could very easily ac- 
count for the so-called phenomena on per- 
fectly natural grounds. 

I would here once again remark how 
utterly footling it is for Spiritualists to at- 
tempt to bolster up the phenomenal side of 



140 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

their cause, by asserting that the demon- 
strations given by such and such a medium 
must be genuine because Sir Oliver Lodge, 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or Sir Somebody 
else — please note well it is nearly always a 
sir — no one gauges the snobbishness of the 
average B. P. better than these Spiritual- 
ists — guarantee that they are genuine. 
Why should Sir Oliver Lodge or Sir A. C. 
Doyle be better able to tell whether a medium 
tricks or not, than any ordinarily observant 
bank manager, butcher or bootblack? The 
chemical laboratory is a poor training school 
for the study of human nature and common 
or garden trickery, and the writings of and 
recent addresses given by Sir A. C. Doyle 
suggest very strongly that he has always 
been prejudiced in favor of Spiritualism, 
and extremely partial to its devotees. No, 
the people most capable of judging the per- 
formances of mediums are professional ex- 
perts in conjuring, and absolutely unbiased 
men and women of the world, who have 
continually rubbed shoulders with all kinds 
and conditions, and know something about 
humanity when it is very subtle and plausi- 
ble, and desperately anxious to make money. 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 141 

To revert to the table. When the room is 
dark, anything of course may happen, for 
you can never trust any one. The temptation 
to make something happen — just a creak, or 
a tilt, or any little movement — anything to 
relieve the monotony, and make the pulses 
throb a trifle faster, is too great to be resisted, 
especially if there are women present. My 
experience points to the fact that women are 
far more unscrupulous in these matters than 
men. N # ow, with regard to the messages. I 
cannot say that anything I read in the much- 
advertised " Raymond " impressed me in the 
slightest. Indeed, it left me astonishingly 
cold, since from the many allusions I had 
heard in private and seen published in the 
newspapers, to what Sir Oliver Lodge was 
supposed to have discovered concerning an- 
other life, I had certainly been led to expect 
something, to say the least of it, very much 
more to the point. 

Of course every professional medium in 
London knows all about Sir Oliver Lodge; 
they make a point of knowing the private 
history of all those who will, in all prob- 
ability, one day visit them. That is part of 
their stock-in-trade, and can be very easily 



142 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

accomplished. Club mates, friends, servants 
can always be got at in some manner or 
another. Clever women can ferret out any- 
thing (they make excellent detectives), so 
that it is not at all surprising that when Sir 
O. Lodge attends a table seance, messages at 
once come through for him and allude to 
something he fondly imagines is known only 
to his family circle. Flukes, too, go a long 
way. Sir Oliver is apparently immensely 
impressed because a medium occasionally 
tells him something quite true ; one would like 
to know how many times the mediums in 
whom he obviously places implicit trust miss 
the mark altogether. We hear much of their 
successes but very little of their failures, and 
I know from my own and other people's ex- 
periences that the failures of mediums very 
far outnumber their so-called successes. In 
my opinion, when they do happen to strike 
a winner, it is almost invariably either by 
chance, or by an inference relating to some 
little piece of information they have suc- 
ceeded in obtaining beforehand. I can see 
nothing in " Raymond" to convince me to the 
contrary, and my opinion is strengthened by 
the piffling nature of certain of the messages 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 143 

which are scandalously attributed to a spirit 
of the dead. Death is a serious ordeal ; there 
can be no doubt whatsoever on that score. 
No one who has ever beheld a sane person 
dying has seen him give way to flippancy 
and laughter at the moment of passing away. 
They have never died regarding death as a 
mere matter for jest, and this being so, pro- 
vided there is such a thing as memory in the 
other world, it is more than likely that the 
spirit mind would have been so deeply 
affected by all it had gone through, that far 
from being hilarious, it would undoubtedly 
be most solemn and reflective. I can recol- 
lect no instance — and my experience, as I can 
very easily prove, has been a fairly large one 
— of any spirit that has returned spontane- 
ously, i. e., without the intervention of a 
medium, ever appearing in the least degree 
mirthful, or inspiring any one with feelings 
other than of fear, awe, or veneration; nor 
has there ever been, in such visitations, any- 
thing to indicate that the other world is in 
any degree frivolous or the least bit like that 
described in Sir Oliver Lodge 's book. 

In my opinion, the future life which Sir 
Oliver Lodge portrays in "Eaymond" — a 



144 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

life of cigarettes, whiskies-and-sodas, and ab- 
surdly constituted garments — is not only an 
utter contradiction to that depicted in the 
Bible and sacred literature of all established 
old-world religions; it is also a complete re- 
pudiation of an idea of life beyond the grave 
as conveyed to us by the whole history of 
ghostdom. Sir Oliver Lodge attributes this 
description to the spirit of one who was very 
precious to him, but, in my opinion again, 
such a description could only have emanated 
from some mischievous, impersonating spirit 
that was never of our flesh and blood, or 
could only have awed its origin (a theory 
which, I think, is far more probable) to the 
imagination of an enterprising and quick- 
witted medium. Have you noticed at table 
seances where you are thoroughly satisfied 
that the medium cannot really know anything 
whatsoever about the sitters, that you never 
get anything quite distinctive, anything, for 
example, that might not apply equally well 
to every one else in the room. For example, 
a message comes through for "K. B.," and 
the medium at once asks if there is a "K. B," 
present, or if any one present knows or once 
knew a "K. B." Now the initials "K. B." 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 145 

are fairly common; most of us have met, at 
some time or other, a Katie Brown, or some 
other Katie B., since there are dozens of sur- 
names beginning with B. The medium is 
thus on fairly safe ground; nor do her sur- 
mises fail, for some one, perhaps more than 
one person present, at once claims knowledge 
of a K. B. who, they state, passed over some 
years ago. All is now, of course, compar- 
atively plain sailing, and a message is at once 
tilted out of the usual non-committal order, 
as, for instance, "K. B." says she is very 
happy, and is particularly anxious no one 
still alive should continue to mourn for her; 
or "K. B." wants to warn you. (Warnings 
are a great stunt, they have just that air of 
mystery about them that is particularly fas- 
cinating. We do so like to be important — to 
feel that we are of so much account that we 
can incur some one's bitter animosity or jeal- 
ousy. Life, as mediums know only too well, 
would not be worth living were it not for 
these vile yet elusive snakes in the grass who 
are eternally plotting our downfall.) Hence, 
when "K. B." announces her desire to warn, 
every one is at once thrilled, and the lucky in- 
dividual for whom the message is intended 



146 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

feels a hero or heroine, as the case may be, 
on the spot. "Do yon know any one likely to 
wish yon ill ? ? ' asks the medium. There is a 
momentary pause, and then a slow and very 
emphatic "yes." "A woman!" the medium 
continues knowingly. Again a slow "yes." 
(Who doesn't know a woman who wishes 
them ill? Most of us know a good many.) 
"Then," the medium says, with the most 
impressive air of conviction, "mark my 
words, it is about that woman the table 
wishes to warn you. Is it not so!" and to 
every one's unfeigned satisfaction the table 
tilts out "yes." The recipient then wants to 
know who the woman is, and the reply that 
comes is either, "A fair lady," or, "A middle- 
aged lady," or, "M. H.," or some other 
equally ordinary initials, but never anything 
very specific. ' ' Can 't you give the surname, ' ' 
the recipient inquires, but the table only re- 
sponds with Mary or Molly. "Don't you 
know a Mary or Molly H.?" the medium 
asks, and the recipient says, "Yes, several" 
(for of course all of us have at one time or 
another met a Mary Harrison or a Molly 
Hill). "Then you may depend it's one of 
them 'K. B.' wishes to warn you against," 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 147 

the medium observes ; and after a little more 
conversation the person for whom the mes- 
sages profess to come, lets out that she or he 
certainly does know a Molly Hill with whom 
they are not on very friendly terms. "Is it 
Molly Hill ! ' 9 the medium at once asks of the 
table, and the reply, of course, is "yes." 

i i rpi iere now? ? » tn e medium exclaims trium- 
phantly, "I knew 'K. B.' had something very 
important to communicate to you. I felt it 
all along. It was to put you on your guard 
against Molly Hill." Then, turning to the 
table, she inquires, "Is there anything 
further you wish to say?" and the table very 
conveniently tilts out "no," and some other 
spirit shortly afterwards declares itself to be 
present. And so on and on ad infinitum — 
always the same "fit-easy" type of questions 
and always the same fit-easy type of answers 
—answers that are invariably aided by in- 
formation the medium manages to extract 
adroitly from one or other of the sitters. 
It is a significant fact that, despite the 
numbers of very clever people who have 
passed over, and who would, according to the 
Spiritualistic theory of evolution and pro- 
gression, still go on endeavoring to improve 



148 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

their minds, no information that has been of 
the slightest value to scientific or medical re- 
search has ever been obtained, either through 
the table or through any other mediumistic 
agency. All the messages so far have been 
either trite, vulgar, blasphemous, libelous, 
or silly and sentimental. Far from evolving 
mentally, the spirits of even the greatest of 
those who have passed over would appear to 
have hopelessly degenerated. As a matter 
of fact, however, I think that most of the so- 
called spirit messages delivered by the table 
are purely subjective, that is to say, they 
originate in the medium's own mind. Con- 
stant practice soon makes her expert in 
summing-up her clients from their personal 
appearance. Face and dress reveal many 
things ; they are very sure givers-away. 

A very few tactful and apparently quite in- 
nocent, lucky questions, answered unsuspect- 
ingly and naturally, give the medium just 
the amount of information she requires for 
a start ; for the rest she trusts to chance, and 
to any inspiration she may obtain through 
covert glances at her client, and from further 
scraps of conversation. Moreover, the war 
has made people so anxious to glean tidings 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 149 

of another world that they will jump at any- 
thing, however remote and trivial, that in 
any way suggests a possibility of the super- 
physical ; and of this mediums are thoroughly 
well aware. They know they have only to 
weave even the barest semblance of truth 
into one of their messages, and their poor, 
half-demented clients will joyfully accept all 
that follows, convinced that it is of spirit 
origin. 

Besides, as I have said before, we always 
hear of a medium's successes, but we are 
never told of his failures; and though our 
attention is invariably demanded whenever 
the hammer succeeds in hitting the nail on 
the head, we are left in blissful ignorance 
of the many times the hammer descends and 
misses the mark altogether. Some Spirit- 
ualists fancy they see a way out of this 
dilemna by suggesting that one must expect 
certain discrepancies in spirit messages, 
since there are unreliable, as well as truth- 
ful spirits, just as there are unreliable, as 
well as truthful people. It may be so, I 
admit, but I think most persons will agree 
that a much more feasible explanation is that 
there are inventive and lying mediums, and 



150 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

that the untruths, far from originating in an- 
other, emanate wholly from this world. 

However, no matter whether the fact is due 
to lying spirits or to lying mediums, by far 
the greater number of the messages tilted 
out at seances are wholly untrustworthy; 
and, of these, many are calculated to do a 
great deal of harm. Apart from the shock 
occasioned by an abrupt announcement that 
some very near relative is either seriously 
ill or dead, mischief of another kind is not in- 
frequently perpetuated; for instance, the 
most abominable scandals are occasionally set 
in circulation, jealousy and suspicion is 
created, friendships and engagements are 
broken off, and wives are set against their 
husbands. Regarding the latter, I know that 
such attempts at breaking-up households 
have been repeatedly, and deliberately made. 
As I have stated elsewhere, this attack on 
men is the latest stunt in mediumship, and, 
in my opinion again, it owes its origin to a 
very large extent to the more militant section 
of the Women's Rights Movement. 

Finally, seeing how often seances are used 
for sinister purposes, how little they can 
ever really benefit mankind, and, on the con- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 151 

trary, what an immeasurable amount of 
harm they can do, I cannot conceive how any 
really thoughtful and rational person can 
recommend them to their friends, or to any 
one for whom they have the slightest con- 
sideration or esteem. In fact, I think we 
cannot censure too strongly the various em- 
inent scientists and authors who, at the pres- 
ent moment, are making use of the Press as a 
medium for propagating their belief in such 
a pernicious and dangerous cult as that of 
Spiritualism. But to revert to the origin of 
the messages received through the table. I 
think what is often accredited to spirits 
(besides being accounted for by conscious or 
unconscious trickery) might well be due to 
thought-reading, suggestion, or animal mag- 
netism; and should there, by any chance, 
be a bond fide spirit present, it is far more 
likely to belong to a mischievous or evil class 
of spirit — akin to the demons in the Bible — 
a class that has never been of our flesh and 
blood — than to be the spirit of any human 
being that has passed over. I do think it 
is possible that a spirit of the dead may, on 
some rare occasion, be present at a seance, 
but, I believe, when such a spirit does come, 



152 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

it comes quite spontaneously, as it would in 
a house that is haunted, and quite irrespec- 
tive of the call of any professional medium, 
who is, by-the-bye, far more likely to keep 
this type of spirit away than to attract it. 

It may, perhaps, be of interest to note here 
what Professor Faraday had to say on the 
question of table-turning, which at about the 
time he wrote (1853), was greatly occupying 
the public mind. A number of explanations 
were then volunteered as to the phenomena, 
which were popularly credited with taking 
place, among them being electricity, magnet- 
ism, some unknown and hitherto unrecog- 
nized physical power which affects inanimate 
bodies, the revolution of the earth, and dia- 
bolical supernatural agency. Professor Far- 
aday had an idea that a quasi-involuntary 
muscular action was the real cause of the 
table tilting and moving round, and he made 
an experiment to see if his surmises were 
correct. What followed is best explained by 
my referring to page 172 of a work entitled 
"Popular Errors," by John Timbs, F. S. A. 
(published 1880, by Crosby, Lockwood & Co., 
London). The following is the extract: 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 153 

"For this purpose, he (Professor Faraday) provided 
an apparatus with index attached; it consisted of two 
small, flat pieces of wood held together by indiarubber 
springs, and separated by small rollers that allowed the 
pieces of wood to move freely over each other. The 
movement of the upper one was shown by an index that 
pointed to the right, or to the left, according to the di- 
rection of the motion. This little apparatus, when 
placed under the hands of a practiced table-turner, had 
the curious effect of paralyzing his power when he 
looked at the index, and thus became conscious of the 
real movement of his hands; but when the index was 
concealed from view the table began to turn as briskly 
as if the apparatus did not intervene. This proved that 
the movement of the table was effected by the direct ac- 
tion of the muscles exerted involuntarily. Again, Pro- 
fessor Faraday observes: 'The most valuable effect of 
this test apparatus is the corrective power it possesses 
over the mind of the table-turner. As soon as the index 
is placed before the most earnest, and they perceive — as 
in my presence they have always done — that it tells 
whether they are pressing downwards only, or obliquely, 
then all effects of table-turning cease, even though the 
parties persevere, earnestly desiring motion, till they be- 
come weary and worn out. No prompting or checking 
the hand is needed, the power is gone; and this only be- 
cause the parties are made conscious of what they are 
really doing mechanically, and so are unable unwittingly 
to deceive themselves.' n 

Of course, Professor Faraday takes a 



154 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

wholly materialistic view of the subject, 
which is possibly a little out of date, but, at 
the same time, I cannot help thinking that 
his test might prove effectual, were it applied 
to the majority of tiltings and turnings of 
the table at present-day seances, especially 
those presided over by professional mediums. 
In the same work we find some interesting 
remarks by Arago in "Meteorological 
Essays," to show that the same force utilized 
in moving tables can be imparted to other 
objects as well, and need have nothing to 
do with the super-physical. On page 173 we 
find Arago quoting from "The Philosophical 
Transactions ' ' Mr. Ellicot's experiments 
upon two pendulum clocks, enclosed in sepa- 
rate cases, suspended from a wooden plank 
affixed to the same wall, and at a distance of 
twenty- three and a half English inches from 
each other. "At first only one of these two 
clocks was going, the second clock was at 
rest. After a certain time this second clock 
was found to have been set going by the im- 
perceptible vibrations transmitted to its 
pendulum from the pendulum of the first 
clock through the medium of the intervening 
solid bodies. A very singular circumstance 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 155 

is that after a certain time longer, while the 
pendulum of the second clock (the one which 
had just been at rest) vibrated in the largest 
arc which the construction of the clock would 
permit, the pendulum of the first clock, the 
one which at first was the only one go- 
ing, had arrived at a state of entire rest." 
Arago's object was to show that there al- 
ready existed in science instances of com- 
munication analogous to those which have 
been recently presented through turning 
tables, and of which the explanation does not 
require any of those mysterious influences 
to which recourse has been had in the case 
of the tables. Hence it will be seen from the 
testimony of another authority how proba»ble 
it is that the physical is really responsible 
for the marvels that take place at table- 
turning, and how thoroughly unwise and even 
dangerous it is for people to place any con- 
fidence in the messages received through 
tables, messages which mediums and others 
declare come from another world. 

I now pass on to the subject of professional 
clairvoyancy. I once went to a seance in a 
room within a mile or so of Piccadilly Circus. 
There must have been about sixty people 



156 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

present, and it is no exaggeration to say that 
the medium, according to her statements, saw 
quite as many spirits as there were people. 
Apparently she saw one behind each chair, 
and she rattled off descriptions of them with 
as much esase and nonchalance as if she had 
been counting chickens, or checking off 
figures in an accountant's office. Surely, 
spirits of the dead must, of necessity, be awe- 
some, at least such is the opinion of most 
people who have had the misfortune to en- 
counter them in haunted houses — but the 
spirits of the dead, present on this occasion, 
seem to have been regarded by the medium 
with neither fear nor respect, for she dis- 
posed of them one after another with rather 
less ceremony than one disposes of old 
clothes. 

This is the- sort of thing that happened. 
The medium standing on the platform and 
pointing energetically at a rather stout 
gentleman sitting in the center of the second 
row: "I see a spirit standing behind you, sir. 
No, not you, but the gentleman with the red 
tie. The spirit is of medium height, not too 
fat, nor yet too thin, but just comfortable. 
It is of medium coloring, neither very fair, 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 157 

nor yet very dark ; its hair is beginning to go 
gray. It has a mustache, and answers to 
the name of George. Do you know any one 
of that name, sir?" 

Rathek Stout Gentleman: "Dozens, and 
your description might suit any one of them." 

Medium (rather angrily) : "Well it's one 
of them, sir, and he is looking at you very 
earnestly, as if he were anxious to tell you 
something. ' ' 

Rather Stout Gentleman : ' ' Then it must 
be George Hammond. I believe I once 
borrowed half-a-crown from him and he 
wants to remind me of it, I suppose. ' ? 

There is a slight laughter, and the medium 
at once points at some one else. 

"The lady over there in the third row with 
the green ribbon on her hat. There is a very 
old lady standing behind you. She is resting 
one hand on your chair, and is eyeing you 
very affectionately. She is of moderate 
height — neither very tall nor very short. 
Rather pale, with gray hair. She answers 
to the name of Mary. Have you ever known 
any old lady of that name, madam!" 

Lady With Green Hat: "Several. My 
grandmother was called Mary, and two of 



158 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

my aunts also, and I have known several 
elderly ladies who were Marys. Can't you 
tell me something more definite? What is 
her surname V 

Medium: "She says she can't say, 
madam, that something is calling her away, 
but that she will visit you again later. ' ' 

Lady With Green Hat: "But her sur- 
name V 9 

The medium, taking no notice, turns to 
some one else and at once begins to describe 
another spirit, this time — answering to the 
name of William. And so the fiasco con- 
tinues. Sometimes there is an emphatic 
denial. The person behind whom a spirit is 
alleged to stand declares he or she has never 
known any one with such a name, whereupon 
the medium, who is doubtless well prepared 
for such an emergency, at once announces 
that it (the spirit) is meant for some one else 
and has mistaken the chair. 

Who can believe that such rubbish as this 
could possibly have anything to do with the 
spirit world? 

And yet seances of this type are far from 
uncommon; you can often see them adver- 
tised. Most mediums prefer, however, to 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 159 

give their clients a private sitting, for a two- 
fold reason. Firstly, because there is more 
money in it — the charges for private sittings 
often run into pounds ; and secondly, because 
there is less chance of interruption. The 
modus operandi is more or less the same. 
Generally several spirits are seen, and their 
description is so vague that it is bound to fit 
in with some one. Moreover, the medium can 
always count on receiving no inconsiderable 
amount of help from the client. She has 
only to give the broad outlines of a face for 
her client to< fill in the features. The tall, 
thin man in khaki, pressing a handkerchief or 
photo to his heart, is at once metamorphosed 
by the agonized young widow client into the 
most accurate description of her dead hus- 
band, though goodness alone knows how 
many other sons and husbands the same de- 
scription — which became a very common 
stock-in-trade with the mediums during the 
war — has previously furnished. Spirits 
seen on these occasions generally have some 
message to give, though how it is conveyed 
to the medium without any one else being 
aware of it is one of the many mysteries con- 
nected with the business of mediumship for 



160 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

business it undoubtedly is — that Spiritual- 
ists do not attempt to explain. 

The kind of message the medium professes 
to receive is again of the "fit-e f asy" type, in 
full accordance with the description of the 
donor. It not infrequently takes this 
form : — 

Medium: "He (the spirit) says you are to 
look in the pockets of his clothes — or else in 
the chest of drawers, he isn 't quite sure which 
— for a letter he received shortly before he 
left home." 

Client: "A letter! How very extraor- 
dinary! Why, I came across several. I 
wonder which of them he means. Was it 
from a lady 1 Ask him. ' ' 

Medium: "Yes, he says it is that one. He 
wishes you to burn it. ' ' 

Client: "Burn it! Why, I wonder? It 
was from his sister Pat, asking him to do 
something for her in the city. ' ' 

Medium: "Pat! There, that's the name 
he has been struggling so hard to say. I 
knew it began with a P, but I could not catch 
the letters that followed. 

Client: How very extraordinary! Tell 
him I will do as he wishes directly I get 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 161 

home. Has lie anything further to say!" 
But the spirit has gone, and the client, deeply 
impressed, takes her departure too, and in- 
forms all her friends what a very marvelous 
medium Madam So-and-So is. 

The photo stunt is another of the regu- 
lar stock-in-hand. All mediums, of course, 
know that during the war soldiers in France 
and at other of the Fronts were frequently 
having their photos taken, so that one of the 
safest possible messages to give is one relat- 
ing to a photograph. 

For example, medium to a war widow who 
has come with express desire to get into 
touch with her dead husband: "I see some- 
thing forming just behind you. (Here 
follows vague description of khaki figure that 
is at once identified by desperate client.) He 
says he has something he very much wishes 
you to have. ' ' 

Client: "I wonder what it can be! I 
thought I had everything. ' ' 

Medium: "It is something he thinks would 
please you — something he had taken shortly 
before he passed away." 

Client: "Ah! I know now! It is the 
photograph, of course. Taken a week or so 



162 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

before he was killed. I received it quite 
safely with the rest of his things. Please 
tell him so." And the poor young widow 
comes away fully convinced that the spirit of 
her dead husband has actually come to her, 
and that the medium is truly marvelous. 
She little knows that precisely the same mes- 
sage has been offered by that same medium 
to dozens of other war widows, though not 
always, perhaps, with the same success, and 
it would undoubtedly be hard to convince her 
that not one of the messages delivered by 
these clairvoyants but could be accounted for 
on natural grounds and in the manner I have 
described. 

A possible solution for the phenomena pro- 
fessed to be seen by mediums, and which no 
doubt are, at times, seen by really earnest 
Spiritualists, who practice concentration in 
private, is in projection and the apparent 
materialization of thought forms. From my 
own experience and that of other people I 
have met, I believe it is quite possible, by 
intense concentration (which usually occurs 
when the subject is asleep or is wholly un- 
conscious of what he is doing) to bring about 
a separation of the material from the imma- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 163 

. terial body, and for the latter to travel con- 
siderable distances and to be seen or heard, 
sometimes both, either individually or collec- 
tively; bnt I am certain this cannot be done 
to order, any more than can the materializa- 
tion of any thought form; so that, as far as 
public or private seances are concerned, I 
think one may rule out this solution alto- 
gether, and attribute anything the clients 
profess to see, either to pure hallucination, 
often largely aided by suggestion on the part 
of some one present, usually the medium or 
an accomplice, or to faking, which, without 
doubt, frequently takes place. If men such 
as the late F. W. H. Myers, Edmund Grurney, 
and Frank Podmore, who had won a world- 
wide reputation as psychical researchers, 
could be hoaxed in the manner described by 
Mr. Douglas Blackburn in a letter to the 
Sunday Times of 16th September, 1917, how 
much more easily can those Spiritualists and 
others, who seek phenomena for the express 
purpose of believing in them, be deceived. 
No one, however eminent, is absolute proof 
against trickery. Robberies ere now have 
actually taken place under the noses of chief 
constables. 



164* MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Now with regard to the aura medium. 
People may have auras or they may not ; the 
matter is at present purely speculative. No 
proof one way or the other has, or, as far ^as 
I can see, can be afforded. But the moment 
one person declared he could see an aura, 
and it was ascertained that there was money 
in it, dozens followed suit, until aura-seers 
are as common now as psychometrists or 
table-tilters. Of course it is very easy to 
pretend one sees colors. One has only to 
be something of an actor, we can then see any 
color, and no one can disprove it. Only, you 
must never see the wrong colors. If some 
obviously coarse, vulgar, ignorant, flashily 
dressed woman comes to consult you about 
her aura, you must not tell her what you or 
any other rational and ordinarily observant 
person would think, you must be both psychic 
and subtle; the two terms, by-the-bye, would 
seem to be pretty well synonymous. You 
must half -close your eyes, and, looking at her 
with a dreamy, far-away expression, say, in 
slow and very measured tones: "I see pale 
blue, yellow, and orange ; they are emanating 
from all over you"; and when she asks what 
they signify, you must take care to reply, 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 165 

"Love, love in its highest and most mysteri- 
ous sense; and intellect (always tell a woman 
she is clever, and she will become your client 
for evermore), and wisdom, not merely or- 
dinary wisdom, but psychic wisdom — wisdom 
that comes from the very soul (this is sure 
to score heavily, because women of the type 
I have described are flattered beyond meas- 
ure at being thought to possess soul) ; and 
power — power to fascinate, and to command 
attention. You might then add, "You are 
quite unlike any one else, you have a strong 
and arrestive personality," and the thing is 
done. 

If you see an aura like this (and most 
aura-seers do) you are certain to succeed, 
and will eventually become known as one of 
the most famous psychists in existence; and, 
after all, the harm you do — if you do any 
harm at all, beyond ridding the wealthier 
classes of a little of their superfluous cash 
and pandering to their eternal craving for 
flattery— is small in comparison to the harm 
done by the majority of mediums in the other 
lines I have indicated. 

I was once told how an aura-teller was 
somewhat neatly caught. A lady journalist 



166 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

went to one, and was so pleased with what 
he professed to see around her that- she 
thought she would go to him again. Now, 
it so happened that, just about the time, she 
was invited to a fancy dress ball at Chelsea, 
and, having had her hair cut quite close to 
her head, she decided to go as a boy. Before 
the event took place, however, the impulse 
seized her to try the effect of her costume 
first, so she put it on and went to the aura- 
seer in it. He obviously did not recognize 
her, and, greatly to her disappointment, the 
aura he now declared he saw differed very 
essentially from the one he had described on 
the occasion of her first visit. 

Trumpet mediums are now very much in 
vogue, and from what I have been told, I 
should say they must be making an extremely 
good thing of it. Their fees, I believe, vary 
from half a sovereign to a sovereign, and 
even more if the sitting is private. The same 
sort of thing takes place at their exhibitions 
as happens at the table and clairvoyant 
seances. Spirits come, whenever the me- 
dium so wills it, and notify their presence by 
talking or singing through a species of 
trumpet. The voices sometimes sound very 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 167 

hollow and mechanical, and sometimes bear 
a certain curious resemblance to the voices 
of the mediums themselves. Invariably, 
there are people at these seances who are 
only too ready to identify one or other of the 
voices with the voice of the dead relative, the 
identification being very materially aided by 
suggestion, either on the part of the medium 
or some one else present. These clients would 
not be quite so eager to claim acquaintance 
with the voices, perhaps, if they did but know 
that, at previous seances given by the same 
medium, voices exactly like them had been 
claimed by countless other clients. 

You ask, how are the voices produced? 
Well, that, perhaps, is not for me to say. 
However, I cannot believe they are the voices 
they pretend to be. Can any sane person 
really think the spirits of their dead relatives 
would come at the bidding of a stranger — 
usually one who is none too edifying — in 
order, with their permission, to speak through 
a trumpet! If they possessed the power to 
return thus promiscuously — I believe they do 
possess the power to return at times, but 
only on rare occasions, when they appear to 
us quite spontaneously — they would as- 



168 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

suredly acquaint us of their presence in a 
rather more dignified manner. . No, if the 
voices proceed from spirits at all, they can 
only proceed from those of a very mis- 
chievous and vulgar class, that specialize in 
imitating the voices of their superiors, and 
in deceiving the poor anxious bereaved ones 
on this earth, who are only too ready to clutch 
at any straw that will bring them the com- 
forting conviction that those who have passed 
away are not utterly annihilated. I do not, 
however, think the spirit explanation is at all 
feasible in this case; I think it far more 
probable that the voices are either produced 
by ventriloquism — and it is a significant fact 
that most trumpet mediums are of the same 
physical type and have the same peculiarities 
with regard to the development of throat and 
chest as professional ventriloquists — or else 
they are due to some mechanical contrivance, 
such as I have no doubt any skilled conjuror 
could manipulate. The messages purporting 
to be delivered by the spirit voices are, in- 
variably, I believe, of the same vague and 
worthless nature as those "spirit" messages 
to which I have already alluded. 
I now come to the question of automatic 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 169 

writing. Here, again, although I am of the 
opinion that messages from a bond fide spirit 
world may come at times, I believe that 
where such is the case the spirits communi- 
cate quite spontaneously. I do not believe 
that any attempt on our part to attract spirits 
of the dead for the purpose of communication 
through writing, saving when they are al- 
ready present, for some such specific purpose 
as haunting, is at all likely to succeed; al- 
though I think that if we sat long enough, 
pencil in hand, concentrating on some denizen 
of the other world coming to our side, some 
very undesirable type of spirit — perhaps of 
the nature of the demons in the Bible — might 
eventually accept our invitation, and that, 
once having come, it would be very loath to 
leave us. I am firmly persuaded, also, that 
this is the only class of spirit at all likely to 
respond to the invitation of professional au- 
tomatic writers, who can never point to any 
but the most trite and worthless messages 
received, and whose intellectual capacities 
and moral characters are seldom — if ever — 
of an order in the least degree likely to at- 
tract the spirits of the really clever or the 
really good. 



170 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

There are very few specimens of automatic 
writing that have ever impressed me as being 
in the least degree remarkable, or that could 
not be accounted for by suggestion, invention, 
auto-hypnotism, hysteria, or some other such 
natural cause. As has been already sug- 
gested in a previous chapter the human mind 
is very complex, and it seems to me an ab- 
solute certainty that what is known as the 
subconscious self is responsible for much that 
is at present attributed to the super-physical. 
Then, again, is it not more than likely that 
the temptation to make the hand write some- 
thing, just to break the awful monotony of 
waiting, would be altogether too strong for 
most people to resist — especially if money 
were attached to it? Until we exhaust all 
possibility of natural agency playing the 
title-role in automatic writing seances, which, 
despite the claims to the contrary made by 
certain eminent Spiritualists, we certainly 
have not done as yet, I do not think we are 
at all justified in assuming that the so-called 
automatic writing has anything whatever to 
do with spirits of the dead. I am quite sure 
I am just as psychic as any Spiritualist, and 
I am equally sure certain of my relatives who 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 171 

have passed away are as dear to me as any 
Spiritualists ' relatives are dear to them, yet 
I have never received any communication 
through a professional medium from even 
one of those I love, indeed, from any one of 
the many whom I know, who are now in the 
other world. 

It is true professional automatic writers 
have given me messages which they have de- 
clared came from spirit friends of mine, but 
since these messages have always been elastic 
enough to fit any one, and identified only with 
some such name as Dick, or Jack, or Mary, I 
could never see in them any proof whatever 
of spirit intercourse. It is disappointing 
that after all we have been led to expect from 
the alleged wonderful communications the 
American medium, Mrs. Piper, and various 
other mediums, equally well known in this 
country, were supposed to be receiving from 
the spirit of the late F. W. H. Myers, the mat- 
ter somehow seems to have been allowed to 
drop. At all events the result was, as far as 
I am aware, never made known in the news- 
papers or any other organ that the public 
could easily get at. That Sir Oliver Lodge 
had a very great respect for Mrs. Piper r s 



172 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

powers is very apparent from certain state- 
ments (see p. Ill) in his work "The Survival 
of Man." (Methuen & Co.) "Mrs. Piper's 
trance personality, ' ' he writes, "is un- 
doubtedly aware of much to which she has no 
kind of ordinarily recognized clue, and of 
which in her ordinary state she knows noth- 
ing." 

Despite this exalted view of her, however, 
and the trumpeting both she and others of 
her ilk, engaged in the same alleged cor- 
respondence with the dead, get from Sir 
Oliver Lodge, nothing seems to have come 
of it all, and those outside the inner circle, 
who are seeking information, are still left 
wondering. 

Now it is hardly fair, and hardly prob- 
able, I think, that a matter of such vital 
importance as a definite proof of another life 
(which is what countless people would give 
everything they possess to receive) should 
be the monopoly of a select few. Yet, from 
the hints given in "The Survival of Man," 
and other utterances of Sir Oliver Lodge, one 
cannot but conclude that such a proof has 
been obtained. At the same time I have pe- 
rused various accounts of the Piper, Thomp- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 173 

son, Verrall, and Holland so-called spirit 
communications, and, so far, looked for this 
proof in vain. 

The sort of things that happens in these 
cross-correspondences is that Mrs. A. in 
America, for example, and Mrs. B. in Eng- 
land both sit down, pretty well simultane- 
ously, to write. Mrs. A. begins a sentence, 
perhaps, in Latin; Mrs. B. ends it, and the 
sentence is declared to be a quotation that 
was constantly used by Mr. C, who is dead. 
Now as both Mrs. A. and Mrs. B. vow and de- 
clare they do not know Latin, and are totally 
unacquainted with any of the late Mr. C.'s 
pet phrases, it is concluded by the great ex- 
perts in psychical research that the spirit of 
Mr. C. had been communicating with both 
these ladies. 

That is, possibly, the proof we are seeking, 
but can any sane person accept it? Ob- 
viously the integrity of the ladies concerned 
has never been called into question, because 
Sir Oliver Lodge and certain other of the 
more Spiritualistic members of the S.P.R. 
have perfect confidence in them. But this 
kind of proof will never do for the man of 
common sense — the man in the street. He 



174 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

wants some much more substantial guarantee 
as to the integrity of mediums than the mere 
opinions of a psychical life, before he satis- 
fies himself that the knowledge displayed in 
their alleged cross-correspondences is derived 
through the agency of the dead. He wants 
absolute proof — proof without any loophole 
whatever, that the mediums engaged in the 
work were not in collusion, did not derive 
their knowledge from information obtained 
beforehand, or that what they wrote was not 
due to pure coincidence, and so far, in my 
opinion at least, no such proof has been forth- 
coming. If it had, all the world would be- 
lieve, and all the world is very far from doing 
that. 

Sir Oliver Lodge seems particularly anx- 
ious to convince his readers with regard to 
the psychic powers of Mrs. Verrall. In 
"The Survival of Man," for example, we 
read (p. 335), "The fame of Mrs. Piper has 
spread into all lands, and I should think the 
fame of Mrs. Verrall also. In these recent 
cases of automatism the Society has been 
singularly fortunate, for in the one we have 
a medium who has been under strict super- 
vision and competent management for the 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 175 

greater part of her psychical life (psychical 
life indeed!) ; and in the other we have one 
of the sanest and acutest (I certainly believe 
in the acuteness, though it is rather doubt- 
ful if the author of ' Raymond ' is much of a 
judge on sanity) of our own investigators, 
fortunately endowed with some power herself 
— some power of acting as translator or in- 
terpreter between the psychic and the phy- 
sical worlds.' ' 

We are given some idea of the nature and 
quality of Mrs. VerralFs power in "The 
Survival of Man" (see pp. 155 and 300). 
It is quite in keeping with the power that is 
responsible for the messages concerning the 
whiskies-and-sodas in " Raymond,' ' and, in 
my opinion, just about as psychic. The re- 
marks I recently made in connection with a 
certain correspondence are equally applicable 
to the case in hand; before Mrs. Verrall 
credits herself with being psychic she must 
eliminate all possibility of fluke and all pos- 
sibility of any knowledge displayed in her 
alleged spirit-inspired writings being derived 
by her beforehand, and retained in her sub- 
conscious mind; and until she has done that 
she is not, in my opinion, at all justified in 



176 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

claiming that she is in the remotest degree 
psychic. At present we have her word, I 
take it, that no such knowledge as that ex- 
hibited was previously acquired by her. 
Sir Oliver Lodge is apparently content to 
accept it ; I am not, because the testimony of 
one single person is no evidence. That, I 
was always given to understand, was one of 
the maxims of the S.P.R. 

In reference to these cases Mrs. Verrall 
may, perhaps, possess absolute integrity; on 
the other hand she may not. Who can 
judge? Obviously, no one but Mrs. Verrall 
herself. No one else, and least of all Sir 
Oliver Lodge, who, in "Raymond," as well 
as in "The Survival of Man," shows that 
where the other sex are concerned -he is the 
very acme of credulity. I might add that 
my statements concerning Mrs. Verrall will 
apply in an equal degree to Mrs. Thompson 
and Mrs. Holland, other mediums mentioned 
in the above works, and in whom also Sir 
Oliver Lodge would appear to place the very 
greatest confidence. With regard to these 
two works (i.e., "The Survival of Man" and 
"Raymond"), their whole tone, in my 
opinion, is one of extreme arbitrariness and 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 177 

self-importance, quite in keeping with the 
character of Spiritualists in general. 

The same spirit is, I think, displayed by 
Sir A. C. Doyle, when discussing the subject 
of Spiritualism in the Sunday Times (see 
correspondence, 1917) and The Nation 
(1919) ; and when one reflects that the accu- 
sation brought against the Churches by 
Spiritualists, more frequently than any other, 
is that they are autocratic and intolerant, it 
is not very easy to repress a smile. In my 
opinion a desperate attempt is now being 
made to firmly plant Spiritualism on the na- 
tion, and to thrust it in the place of the pres- 
ent State Church. I can quite well see in 
my mind's eye a new archbishop in the person 
of Sir Oliver Lodge, bishops in the persons of 
Sir W. F. Barrett, Sir A. C. Doyle, and, per- 
haps, Mr. J. A. Hill, and vicars innumerable 
in the persons of known and unknown me- 
diums. A school or institute for training 
psychics is already in the mind, and doubt- 
less such schools or institutes will, in time, 
supplant the present theological colleges. 
This idea of religious revolution may seem 
baseless and visionary, but I verily believe a 
colossal effort on the part of Spiritualists 



178 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

will be made to bring it about, and I am quite 
certain, if it is accomplished, the State Spirit- 
ualistic Church (if such you could designate 
it) would be ten thousand times more dog- 
matic, arrogant, and bigoted than any State 
Church we have hitherto known. 

But to revert again to so-called cross-cor- 
respondences. There is another point that 
has to be considered when dealing with them, 
and that is the question of identity. Suppos- 
ing the communications were actually due to 
spirit agency, what proof have we that that 
agency is what it professes to be? Surely 
it would not be difficult for a mischievous, 
clever, and cunning spirit to impersonate the 
spirit of F. W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, 
or Professor Hodgson. Being behind the 
scenes, so to speak, it would surely have some 
means of ascertaining at least one or two of 
the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of any 
one of those three gentlemen when they lived 
on this material plane — and who could de- 
tect the difference? No living being, be- 
cause — despite all that has been proffered by 
mediums as information hailing from the 
other world — we know absolutely nothing 
about spirits — we cannot say of what they 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 179 

are -composed, or in any way define or limit 
their capabilities. They are, so far at all 
events, completely outside our ken. 

Moreover, it is but feasible to suppose that 
some of this cross-correspondence would be 
due to impersonation, since such trickery 
would only coincide with the silly phenomena 
claimed by Spiritualists as taking place at 
table-tilting and trumpet-speaking seances. 
In all probability, the spirits that derive 
amusement from tilting tables, banging 
tambourines, and putting sweets in people's 
mouths, are only too ready, for the sake of 
variety, to seize the opportunity of imperson- 
ating their superiors. 

Before passing on to another branch of 
mediumistic display, let me refer briefly to 
a matter of no little importance, namely, the 
training of psychics. It will be remembered 
that in speaking of Mrs. Piper I quoted cer- 
tain extracts from Sir Oliver Lodge, one of 
which contained the words, "who has been 
under strict supervision and competent man- 
agement.' ' This, of course, can only mean 
that Mrs. Piper was undergoing a process of 
so-called development. Of what that process 
consists I neither know nor can conceive, nor 



180 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

can I imagine who the competent trainers 
could be, since, considering the fact that the 
forces constituting the other world are at 
present wholly unknown to us, it is quite in- 
conceivable that any one should lay claim to 
any competency whatever concerning them. 
In order to train a pupil you must have some 
knowledge, at all events, of the subject in 
which you intend training him. And who is 
there that can claim to be an authority on 
such a debatable subject as the psychic 
faculty? Sir Oliver Lodge cannot, nor can 
Sir W. F. Barrett, nor Mrs. Thompson, nor 
Mrs. Verrall, for, as far as I can see, they 
have not given the slightest proof that they 
possess any power whatever to get in touch 
or to communicate with another world, and 
it is that power, I take it, that the so-called 
psychic faculty is supposed to represent. 

The training of psychics then means that 
an attempt is being made to develop the 
psychic faculty in those who are supposed to 
possess it, but who, in all probability, do not 
possess it, by people who know no more of 
what the super-physical embraces than do 
those whom they are professing to instruct. 
But what these self-styled professors of psy- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD - 181 

chism can help to develop is hysteria, and 
that they are doing daily. They develop 
hysteria in some -of their pupils and unwit- 
tingly encourage trickery in others, so that 
the work they are doing is without doubt both 
injurious and demoralizing. One would like 
to know how many of these trained mediums 
have ended in becoming hopeless degenerates 
o-r confirmed tricksters. The records of 
mediumship will reveal much. 

I now come to the question of psychometry. 
This, in my opinion, is almost invariably done 
either by pure trickery or else by mere in- 
ference from the client's personal appear- 
ance. At meetings where a number of 
articles are collected and put into a box, the 
box is quickly changed by an accomplice and 
an empty one substituted in its place. This 
can easily be done under cover of conversa- 
tion — the psychometrists are generally wind- 
bags — or some sudden little noise or disturb- 
ance, just sufficient to divert the audience's 
attention from the box. An accomplice then 
communicates to the medium, generally by a 
code of signals made with the face, hands, 
feet, or tappings under the floor, or, if the 
medium wears a mask, by a telephone, the 



182 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

wire of which can be very easily and effect- 
ually hidden from the audience, a description 
of the articles and any initials or other marks 
on them. The medium at once makes use of 
this information in the manner, practice has 
taught her, will most impress the audience. 
On these occasions anything, however slightly 
true, is sure to be proclaimed wonderful ; the 
audience have come there wanting to believe, 
and are more than half convinced before the 
performance begins. 

There is nothing that a professional psy- 
chometrist does, either at a public or a pri- 
vate sitting, that could not be done by any 
fairly competent professional conjuror, and 
probably done better. All that the psychom- 
etrist requires who sees her clients pri- 
vately (ostensibly on the grounds that one 
seldom gets the right psychic conditions in 
public places), and thereby avoids all danger 
of such exposure, as once overtook the slate 
medium, Dr. "Slade, ,? is a shrewd knowledge 
of human nature, some power to draw infer- 
ences from physiognomy, an ability to play 
the part of detective and acquire information 
by prying into and ferreting out family 
secrets, and an unlimited amount of assur- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 183 

ance (the two last-named requisites coming 
readily and naturally to many women). The 
rest is merely a matter of practice. Hun- 
dreds are at it, and there will be hundreds 
more, so long as society women continue to 
hunt around for novelty and sensation and 
their husbands are silly enough to allow them 
money to spend on such tomfoolery. If 
there were no money in psychometry, there 
would be no psychometrists. It is astonish- 
ing to find how much the so-called psy- 
chic faculty is regulated by the money 
market. Before the war, when Society 
spent most of its money abroad, Lon- 
don had comparatively few professional me- 
diums; but as soon as the war came, and 
mothers and widows were ready to pay any- 
thing to get in touch with their relatives, 
hundreds of people suddenly found out that 
they were psychics, and immediately styled 
themselves " professional clairvoyants, ' ' 
"psychometrists," or " trance mediums"; 
black magic, too, sprang up, and may now 
be said to have a by no means small clientele. 
At a fantastical exhibition of " black magic" 
in Chelsea, to which I had gone with a party 
of friends, after being led to expect that the 



184 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

room would suddenly fill with all kinds of 
ethereal demons, the only thing any of us 
saw, in the least degree like our preconceived 
notion of a devil, was the magician himself. 
At the same time I think it quite possible that 
if one continually invites the intercourse of 
hellish spirits, offering them, so to say, a free 
passage and free field, one might succeed in 
getting in touch with them, and that — with- 
out the aid of any of those particular mystical 
words and symbols experimenters in the black 
art tell me are indispensable. 

I do not propose to deal here with the dif- 
ferent kinds of black magic now in vogue — 
they are all the result of this present mad 
craze for Spiritualism — but, I might say that 
from what I can gather, hypnotism and sug- 
gestion, as in Spiritualism, probably play an 
important role in most of them, whilst in a 
few there is unquestionably something very 
filthy and disgusting. Of course many of the 
mediums who profess to be exponents of 
black magic are pure fakers, and, perhaps, 
beyond mere trickery would stoop to nothing 
worse, but there are some, I am convinced, 
who make so-called initiation an excuse for 
the perpetration of acts only likely to attract 






THE DANGER OF FRAUD 185 

the very lowest and foulest type of spirit; 
and I would most solemnly warn all those, at 
least, who have no desire to lose money and 
self-respect too, to shun this subject and give 
it the very widest berth possible. 

Spiritualism (excluding black magic, of 
course) numbers among its advocates 
scientists like Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir W. F. 
Barrett, Sir William Crookes, Professors 
Janet, Bernheim, Lombroso, Flammarion, 
and others. Equally clever and prominent 
men, however, are opposed to it, and I now 
intend quoting a few extracts from the writ- 
ings and letters of the latter. First of all, 
I will refer to Sir Ray Lankester, K.C.B., 
F.R.S., whose writings are singularly free 
from any of that egotism and bumptious 
fanaticism that is so characteristic of the 
writings of Spiritualists, such as Sir Oliver 
Lodge, Sir A. C. Doyle, and others. 

In the January number of Bedrock (1913), 
Sir Ray Lankester writes, apropos of Sir 
Oliver and telepathy, "Sir Oliver Lodge, 
when president of the Psychical Research 
Society, some years ago, actually went so 
far as to assert that the society had achieved 
a great result; it had, he said, ' discovered' 



186 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

telepathy. We all know what the word ' dis- 
covery ' means in the statement of a profes- 
sional man of science. It means not that a 
guess or fancy has been pnt forward, but that 
the thing said to be l discovered ' has been 
demonstrated to exist by evidence which 
bears the test of strict examination as to its 
truth — evidence which can be produced and 
subjected again and again to searching criti- 
cism." Just such a test as I have suggested 
should be applied by the outside public to 
Mrs. Verrall and other of the mediums Sir 
Oliver Lodge and his confreres have so per- 
sistently bolstered up. "At the time I chal- 
lenged,' ' (in a letter to the Press) Sir Ray 
Lankester continues, "Sir Oliver Lodge's 
statement that telepathy had been ' dis- 
covered/ I asked for the demonstration nec- 
essary to justify the assertion that telepathy 
had been * discovered/ I professed my will- 
ingness to investigate this phenomenon stated 
to occur in our midst and its asserted dis- 
covery. No opportunity of investigating it 
has ever been offered to me by those who de- 
clare that it exists. I was definitely refused 
the opportunity of examining the asserted 
phenomenon for which I applied to the So- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 187 

ciety for Psychical Research. No evidence 
establishing experimentally the existence of 
' telepathy ' has been published by Sir Oliver 
Lodge or by his associates.' J And so it is 
with regard to the wonderful proofs alleged 
to have been obtained through cross-cor- 
respondence and at the table. There has 
been a marvelous lot of trumpeting by the 
same gentleman and his associates, but when 
a proof has been demanded for the general 
public, it has been ominously withheld. 

Now let us hear what the same author — 
a scientist every whit as eminent in his own 
line as Sir Oliver Lodge is in his — has to say 
with regard to spirit presences at seances. 
In the new and revised edition of "The 
Kingdom of Man" (Watts & Co., London, 
1912), we read (p. 36), "Modern biologists 
(I am glad to be able to affirm) do not accept 
the hypothesis of * telepathy' advocated by 
Sir Oliver Lodge, nor that of the intrusions 
of disembodied spirits pressed upon them 
by others of the same school. We biolo- 
gists take no stock in these mysterious en- 
tities." 

Next, let us refer to an article by Ivor 
Tuckett, M.A., M.D., entitled "The Illogical 



188 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Position of Some Psychical Kesearchers," 
also in the January, 1913, number of Bedrock. 
In a passage relating to Mrs. Verrall and 
Mrs. Piper, Dr. Ivor Tuckett "writes, "Then 
again, it is sometimes triumphantly asked, 
how do you explain certain cases of cross- 
correspondence or the best of Mrs. Piper's 
trance utterances and writings f The answer 
to this is that on the data supplied a normal 
explanation may not be possible, but that the 
first point to decide is whether the witnesses 
and reporters of the case can be regarded as 
competent; and that if in their other writ- 
ings they have not shown a high standard of 
evidence, or if the will to believe is at all 
noticeable, then, in view of the fact that the 
observations cannot be repeated, an agnostic 
attitude is essentially scientific." The wit- 
nesses and reporters of the phenomena are, 
invariably, pronounced Spiritualists of the 
order of Sir Oliver Lodge and Mr. J. A. Hill ; 
but the mere fact that the writing might be 
at one time compatible with the truth and at 
another time not, renders it worthless, and, 
consequently (no matter whether it be spirits 
who lie or the mediums, the result is the 
same), since we are never sure that we can 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 189 

depend on it, we cannot regard it as of any 
practical use whatever. 

Referring to Mrs. Verrall, Dr. Tuckett ob- 
serves, "On a series of automatic writings, 
where she records the results of three hun- 
dred and twenty-two experiments on herself, 
and where telepathic experiments, with the 
avowed object of determining whether in- 
formation unknown to the writer could be 
conveyed by automatic writing, were practi- 
cally unsuccessful. Indeed, these experi- 
ments very strongly suggest, if they do not 
establish, the fact that automatic writing is 
concerned with the reproduction of past ex- 
periences or of fabrications founded on these 
experiences. The conclusion, then, of this 
rejoinder is that no phenomena requiring a 
supernormal explanation, have yet been re- 
corded under conditions sufficiently free from 
the possibility of error as to satisfy a scien- 
tific standard of research.' ' Which is pre- 
cisely what I have said. 

Again, with regard, to Sir Oliver Lodge 
and other of his Spiritualistic associates of 
the S.P.R., Dr. Tuckett remarks, "When Sir 
Oliver Lodge ends his article with the as- 
sertion that the S.P.R. was founded in ex- 



190 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

plicit accord with Huxley's dictum about the 
importance of 'the resolution to take noth- 
ing for truth without clear knowledge that it 
is such/ he forgets to state that from the 
start some of its most prominent members 
have taken the hypotheses of 'psychic force/ 
'telepathy/ and 'Spiritistic interference ' for 
truth without any clear knowledge they are 
such." This substantiates my assertion that 
one can really place very little reliance on the 
testimony of men who, like Sir Oliver Lodge, 
enter the arena of Psychical Eesearch en- 
tirely biased in favor of believing, who are, 
in fact, out to believe, in spite of any and 
every obstacle. 

Dr. Tuckett soon dismisses Sir Oliver 
Lodge 's shadow, Mr. J. A. Hill. After refer- 
ring to certain passages (p. 80) in Mr. Hill's 
work, "New Evidences in Psychical Re- 
search" (a work which bears the hall-mark 
of Spiritualism, namely, a super-abundance 
of high-falutin expressions and would-be 
scientific terms), Dr. Tuckett proceeds: "In 
fact the evidence which has driven him (Mr. 
Hill) to believe in psychometry consists of 
the uncritical stories of a few friends and of 
his own unverified experience on one or per- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 191 

haps two occasions." And, again, "Mr. 
Hill, as revealed in his writings, is really 
rather an interesting psychological study 
because he clearly recognizes the need of 
' careful observation and experiment, scru- 
pulously accurate recording, and cautious in- 
ferring' ('New Evidences in Psychical Re- 
search,' p. 212. Rider, London, 1911), and 
at the same time shows that he has had no 
practical training in exercising these quali- 
ties," — remarks that might surely be applied 
to all who attempt to bolster up Spiritualism 
and mediums. 

I will now turn to an article entitled 
"Science and Spiritualism," by Sir Bryan 
Donkin, M.D., F.R.C.P., also in the January, 
1913, number of Bedrock. In it we read, 
"The present writer has had considerable ex- 
perience in the past of spiritualistic seances 
of many kinds, both public and private (in 
a footnote it is stated that he attended 
seances held by Corner (nee F. Cook), Annie 
Eva Fay, Williams, Hearne, Hush, and 
Eglington — all well-known mediums of their 
time), including manifestations of 'thought 
transference,' and also of what is now called 
'automatic writing' with and without the aid 



192 MENACE OE SPIRITUALISM 

of the ingenious instrument known as plan- 
cliette; and he has found, as many others 
have found (myself amongst the number) 
that difficulty or impossibility of applying 
crucial tests of the occurrence of phenomena 
as alleged has always coincided with the 
existence of certain preliminary conditions 
postulated as necessary for the manifesta- 
tions.' ' The pretext of mediums that it is 
very harmful and injurious to spirits to be 
touched, or experimented upon in any way 
during the so-called materialization, is, of 
course, all buncombe. Spirits that manifest 
themselves spontaneously in haunted houses 
experience no harm when chairs are thrown 
at them, so why should those at seances. The 
conclusion is obvious. 

But to continue the quotation from Sir 
Bryan's article: "Without further illustrat- 
ing here from his own experience this quasi- 
pathological study of ' Psychics' and their 
prophets and disciples, or quoting the numer- 
ous cases where appropriate tests were ap- 
plied and the manifestations declined or dis- 
appeared as the crucial test was approached 
or attained; or where the results either 
demonstrated or directly indicated a well- 



THE DANGER OF FRAtTD 193 

known agency in the production of the phe- 
nomena; or where mistaken observations, or 
illusions, or statements and actions which 
were confessedly fraudulent, were revealed; 
he maintains, on the grounds set forth above, 
that science is more than fully justified in 
leaving the jewels of Psychical Research to 
be plowed by those who please.' ' This is 
a pretty sure guide to what Sir Bryan really 
thinks on this subject. 

Further on he says, "The more frequently 
instances of some classes of ' occult' phenom- 
ena have been confessedly proved to be due 
to misconception or to manifest trickery" — 
(this referring to the movements of pieces of 
furniture, materialization and tangibility of 
spirit-forms) — "the more such classes are 
neglected or ignored, essential though they, 
were to the Spiritualistic propaganda of the 
not far distant past" — (many Spiritualists 
still believe in them) — "and the more stress 
is laid on other kinds of alleged phenomena' ' 
— (automatic writing, for instance)— "that 
have been less often actually and severally 
demonstrated to be due to similar origins." 

Sir Bryan goes on to add that it is often 
announced from the pulpit (I suppose he 



194 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

means the Spiritualistic pulpit) and plat- 
form that "the materialistic science" of the 
last century has given way to the scientific 
philosophy of such present-day teachers as 
Professor Bergson, and that the prophets of 
Psychical Research are now clamoring to be 
recognized as " scientific' ' students of the 
"super-normal." "But," Sir Bryan re- 
marks, "those who recognize no scientific 
revolution, nor any victory over the accepted 
methods of scientific research by any philoso- 
phies whatever, regard all such attempts at 
reconciliation as mere logomachy, and say of 
such as, in the name of Science, would abro- 
gate scientific method, 'they make a Desert, 
and call it Peace.' " Spiritualists would do 
well to ponder over this when boasting their 
cause is advocated by the scientific world. 

Lastly, Sir Bryan issues a warning which, 
I think, should have special significance for 
all those dabbling in Spiritualism. ' ' Much, ' " 
he says, "might be said of the multiform 
harm resulting from the advocacy of 'Psy- 
chical Research' (in its current and peculiar 
sense). But, in order to avoid any possible 
confusion of the issue, the writer has pur- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 195 

posely omitted all reference to this from his 
argument." 

I now come to a work by Lionel A. 
Weatherly, M.D., and J. N. Maskelyne. It is 
called "The Supernatural' ' (published by 
J. W. Arrowsmith, Bristol). On the title 
page confronting a dedication to Daniel Hack 
Tuke, M.D., we find these very appropriate 
lines by Dr. Maudsley: "If all visions, in- 
tuitions, and other modes of communication 
with the supernatural, accredited now or at 
any time, have been no more than phenomena 
of psychology — instances, that is, of sub-nor- 
mal, supra-normal, or abnormal mental func- 
tion — and if all existing supernatural beliefs 
are survivals of a state of thought befitting 
lower stages of human development, the con- 
tinuance of such beliefs cannot be helpful, it 
must be hurtful to human progress." 

In this work the mediumistic side of 
Spiritualism is summed up very neatly by 
Mr. J. N. Maskelyne. "The doctrine of so- 
called Spiritualism," he says (see p. 183), 
"embodies an abstract principle and a con- 
crete fact — the principle being 'that those 
who have plenty of money and no brains were 



196 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

made for those who have plenty of brains 
and no money'; and the fact is that the ranks 
of the Spiritualists have ever been largely 
recrnited from these two classes." 

Beferring to the notorious American 
mediums, the Fox sisters, the same author 
remarks (p. 187): "Speaking of the Fox 
girls, the Professors of the Medical College, 
Buffalo, said that these loosely constructed 
girls got their raps by snapping their toe 
and knee joints." On the same page, again, 
is the following quotation, which refers to 
the confession made by Mrs. Norman Culver, 
a relation of the Fox family: ". . . but 
something I (Mrs. Culver) saw when I was 
visiting the girls at Eochester made me sus- 
pect they were deceiving. I resolved to 
satisfy myself in some way, and some time 
afterwards I made a proposition to Catherine 
to assist her in producing the manifestations. 
. . . After I had helped her in this way for 
some time, she revealed to me the secrets. 
The raps are produced by the toes. All the 
toes are used. After a week's practice with 
Catherine showing me how, I could produce 
them perfectly myself." And no doubt this 
is how many of the rappings are done by 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 197 

mediums at table-turning seances to-day. It 
is significant to note that all New York State 
went mad over these supposed great psychics, 
just as London is going mad over other 
supposed great psychics at the present 
moment. 

In connection with the famous medium, 
Daniel Douglas Hume, who, to quote Mr. 
Maskelyne's words (p. 189), "wound his way 
into the best society, always despising filthy 
lucre, but never refusing a diamond worth 
ten times the amount he would have received 
in cash," we are told he got involved in a 
law-suit by pretending to get such messages 
from the spirit of a dead man, as induced the 
latter 's widow to give him thirty thousand 
pounds. The suit went against him — as even 
his confreres were forced to admit, very 
justly — and, like a good many mediums have 
done since, he fizzled out. 

With regard to Miss Annie Eva Fay, an- 
other American medium who duped thou- 
sands of people in this country, Mr. Maske- 
lyne writes, "Her seance was the most trans- 
parent trickery all through ; so simple, indeed, 
that in a few days I taught my colleague the 
whole of her tricks, and he performed them 



198 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

at the Egyptian Hall, whilst Miss Fay was 
holding seances at the Hanover Square 
Eooms. The result of this was that Miss 
Fay made a very short stay in London. ' ' 

Apropos of Dr. Slade, the slate-writing 
medium, Mr. Maskelyne remarks, "How- 
ever, from the reports of my deputies and 
others, the secrets were in my possession 
within a few weeks, and I was planning a 
grand exposure, when Professor Lancaster 
and the late Dr. Donkin caught the gentle- 
man red-handed, and prosecuted him and his 
manager. ' ' 

Mr. Maskelyne deals with so-called 
materializations, table-turning, thought- 
reading, and spirit photography in the same 
work, and what he thinks of them all he 
suggests in a nutshell, when referring (see 
p. 205) to the report of a certain commission 
of inquiry into these several branches of 
professional mediumship. "Of genuine 
manifestations," he writes, "they found ab- 
solutely none — not one single indication of 
anything that could not be accounted for by 
the most puerile trickery"; and with these 
observations we will leave him. I can only 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 199 

add that the work of which he and Dr. 
Weatherly are the joint authors should be 
read by all persons who are contemplating at- 
tending a seance. 

Other works that I would strongly recom- 
mend these same people should read (in addi- 
tion to most of those from which I have al- 
ready quoted) are Dr. Charles Mercier's 
"Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge/ ' and 
Mr. J. Godfrey Baupert's "The Dangers of 
Spiritualism' ' (Kegan Paul, Trench, Triib- 
ner&Co., 1906). 

In the latter work (p. 143) we find the fol- 
lowing: "The exercise of mediumship is al- 
most always attended by physical exhaustion, 
very frequently by complete mental prostra- 
tion, producing a kind, of moral paralysis and 
inertia of the will. Sometimes there are 
cataleptic seizures, contortions of the 
muscles of the face which are terrible to wit- 
ness, and which are, all of them, conditions 
awakening disgust in all healthy and nor- 
mally constituted minds. ' ' And again (see p. 
145), "Whatever the scientific explanation of 
these physical accompaniments may be, is 
it likely, considering the debasing effect they 



200 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

have on most minds, that Providence would 
employ such ignoble and unworthy means 
with a view to the higher moral advancement 
of mankind V 9 

Regarding the question of identity, Mr. 
Raupert apparently shares my views. He 
says (p. 115), "The absolute futility of any 
attempt at identifying spirits is another dis- 
couraging or unsatisfactory circumstance. 
It is no proof that the spirit communicating 
is A. B. if he tells me of words or circum- 
stances (supposed to be) known only to A. B. 
and myself. Who knows how many spirits 
are more or less eavesdropping in every time 
and place ! [ 9 

A somewhat unusual view of the subject 
was taken by the late George Macdonald. 
In his work, "The Miracles of Our Lord," 
he says, for instance (p. 160), "There seems 
to me nothing unreasonable in the supposi- 
tion of the existence of spirits who, having 
once had such bodies as ours, and having 
abused the privileges of embodiment, are 
condemned for a season to roam about bodi- 
less, ever mourning the loss of their capacity 
for the only pleasure they care for, and crav- 
ing after them in their imagination. Such, 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 201 

either in selfish hate of those who have what 
they have lost, or from eagerness to come 
as near the possession of a corporeal form as 
they may, might well seek to ' enter into a 
man.' " 

Another author from whom I will quote 
briefly is Mr. Edward Clodd, and the fol- 
lowing extracts from his letter to the Sunday 
Times (7th October, 1917) will, I think, very 
well serve to indicate his attitude towards 
Spiritualism and some of those who practice 
it. 

"The corrective to any tendency to believe 
in the delusion," he writes, "is supplied by 
a study of animistic ideas, such as is given in 
Tylor's 'Primitive Culture.' Therein is 
clearly set forth the origin and growth of 
early man's conception of a soul and a fu- 
ture life, upon which no further light has 
been thrown by this pretentious Spiritualism. 
It is only the old animism writ large." And 
again, "Instead of 'about it and about,' with 
which Spiritualists are filling your columns, 
why do they not urge their leaders to bring 
the phenomena before the Court of Science, 
where mere personal authority has no value, 
and where, on the principle of setting a con- 



202 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

jurer to catch a conjurer, Mr. Devant should 
be subpoenaed. ' ' 

Mr. F. H. Hayward (D.Lit, B.S., Lon- 
don) also has something interesting to say in 
this controversy on Spiritualism going on in 
the Sunday Times, and the following extract 
is from his letter to that paper, published on 
14th October, 1917: 

"What exactly,' ' he asks, "has Sir Oliver 
Lodge discovered? What revelations have 
come to him through the mediums, untrust- 
worthy or otherwise, whom he has consulted? 
Is the whole mass of such revelations, even 
if true, worth a schoolboy's consideration V f 
And further on: "Your readers will note the 
evidence of a future life would not be neces- 
sary for people who believed in the Kesur- 
rection of Jesus. Like most scientists, Sir 
Oliver Lodge and Sir A. C. Doyle evidently 
do not believe — or did not believe — in that, 
otherwise they would not have gone fishing 
for other proof s." 

And, lastly, I refer to some remarks by 
Mr. Nevil Maskelyne, also made in the Sun- 
day Times, but in a letter published on 28th 
October, 1917. Eeferring to the question of 
investigating supposed spiritual phenomena, 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 203 

Mr. N. Maskelyne observes, ". . . tlie only 
people who are really competent to undertake 
an investigation are, necessarily, those who 
have a knowledge of, at least, the modern 
magic. Professed scientists, as a rule, have 
no such knowledge. I very much doubt if 
Sir Oliver Lodge, for example, even knows 
there is such a thing as the theory of magic.' ' 
And he adds, " During the past thirty years 
I have, from time to time, been associated 
with my father, the late J. N. Maskelyne, in 
investigations concerning alleged Spiritual- 
istic phenomena. And in all those years I 
have never discovered anything that even 
tends to lend color to the Spiritualistic 
hypothesis." 

From these extracts and quotations I trust 
it may be gathered (since they have been 
given partly to show) that despite the puff- 
ing up that Spiritualism — particularly the 
mediumistic side of Spiritualism — is receiv- 
ing at the hands of a clique of well-known 
scientists and authors, there is still a strong 
consensus of opinion, equally expert, against 
it. I hope I have made it quite clear, for 
example, that the orthodox Churches are 
unanimous in condemning Spiritualism on 



204 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

the grounds that it is dangerous to faith and 
morality alike; that the medical profession, 
with little exception, oppose it on the grounds 
that it is thoroughly injurious to health; 
whilst many of the most eminent scientists — 
by far the greater number, in fact — regard it 
as a sham, maintaining that its phenomena 
are wholly explainable by natural causes, 
and, more often than not, by trickery. To 
the ordinary average man who is neither 
very religious nor very eminent, but who has 
plenty of common sense, Spiritualism can 
only appear as a hotch-potch of imbecility, 
gullibility, and roguery — a hotch-potch that 
has been of benefit to no one, saving those 
that have filled their pockets out of it. To 
me one of the worst results of this popular 
side of Spiritualism is that it has led — and 
still is leading — to such bitter deception and 
disappointment. Of the legions of widows 
and other bereaved ones who have been in- 
duced to visit mediums through seeing them 
advertised in books, magazines, and news- 
papers, none, perhaps, have been wholly 
satisfied, and the majority have come away 
with the ache in their heart increased 
rather than diminished. 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 205 

It may possibly be said of me that all this 
is inconsistent with the views I have hitherto 
expressed in my writings. Let me observe 
that it is nothing of the kind. It is true that 
I have stated my implicit belief in what are 
termed ghosts; and in ghosts — in hannted 
houses, and at the time of, or immediately 
subsequent to, death — I have always believed 
and still most emphatically do believe; but 
these ghosts, I would remind you, are of a 
different nature from the type of thing we 
are taught to associate with the spirit world 
at seances. It is with regard to the latter — 
the latter only — that I am very, very skepti- 
cal, and I repeat once again that I do not 
think it at all probable that any of the psy- 
chics of to-day possess the power of evoking 
or getting in touch at will with spirits of the 
dead; though I think it just possible that 
they may on rare occasions and quite by 
chance succeed in attracting spirits of an- 
other kind. 

The so-called manifestations we see and 
hear at seances command neither awe nor 
respect, but are merely treated either with 
vulgar familiarity or with open derision. 
They are a bad, very bad imitation of the 



206 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

genuine visitant from another world, and 
they would certainly never take in any one 
who had ever had any experience whatever 
of a bond fide ghost. 

Lastly, if we must have a change — must 
have something different in the place of our 
present orthodox Churches, and in the place 
of Christianity — for goodness ' sake let us 
look around for something that will be both 
edifying and regenerating; for something 
that, unlike Spiritualism, will make us less 
selfish, less snobbish, less greedy, less arro- 
gant, and less hopelessly self-satisfied; in 
short, let us look for something that will de- 
velop what few virtues we may happen to 
possess, and not tend — as Spiritualism most 
certainly does tend — to accentuate all our 
old vices and, what is undoubtedly more 
serious, to create new ones. 



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